Julian is currently working on major show for the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival.
The Foliate Bosses Julian Perry – Stevie Wishart
24 May - 29 June 2025
Artist Julian Perry and composer Stevie Wishart are collaborating to create a powerful and emotionally charged installation at Britten Pears Arts from 24 May – 29 June as part of this year’s Aldeburgh Festival.
The Foliate Bosses will be installed in several places at Snape Maltings and is a continuation of Perry’s ongoing study of coastal erosion, that sees our crumbling coasts as emblems of an environment in crisis. Perry has been working for two years to create a series of large paintings recording the natural life that is falling from the East Anglian cliffs due to coastal erosion. The centrepiece of this project has been the creation of his “Foliate Bosses”; complex paintings that gather fallen trees, wild plants and mud into roughly circular images. The four works take a form that knowingly echoes medieval roof bosses.
Wishart, long associated with early music, has created an original sound world conflating her recordings of rare and endangered birds and her own original music. During the run of the show Wishart will perform a specially commissioned piece responding to Perry’s works and her own heartfelt engagement with the environmental crisis.
Video above work in progress, Image below: Foliate Boss III Oil on panel 157 x 122cm Music: O Euchari by Steive Wishart , from the Album Viriditas.
Image below: Foliate Boss I 2024 Oil on Panel 175 x 122cm
Foliate Boss 1V 2025 Oil on panel 157 x 122cm
J.P In London studio with commissioned new smaller version of Benacre III
Between 2019 and 2021 the studio focused on “There Rolls The Deep” major one person show at Southampton City Art Gallery. Five galleries of works on the theme of coastal erosion as emblematic of Climate Breakdown.
“A secular altarpiece to the Assumption of Co2” Large work in progress that will form the centre piece of my installation in Southampton. Will be installed on a specially constructed wall spotlit in a darkened gallery. To the accompaniment of Hildigard Von Bingen Oil on 4 panels 2.14 x 3.2m
Benacre Birch i Reworked for Southampton City Art Gallery and first showing in the UK. 2.4 x 1.8m
Large work Benacre Birch iii Reworked for Southampton City Art Gallery. 2.4 x 1.8m
Recent works on Coastal Erosion
Pillbox with Bladderwrach 2019
Studio
Recent and current projects:
New work revisiting studies made in what is now the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London. The location is now utterly unrecognisable, transformed into terraced lawns.
Studio June 2017 new works: Top lit Birches left and Fallen Tree.
Below are images of my London studio. Firstly: large works in progress for installation at the Venice Biennale.
Click here for Venice exhibition details, press release and catalogue entry.
Secondly: my 2015 project, a response to the growing threat to British Trees. The project culminated in an exhibition at Mascalls Gallery Kent from the 19th of September to the 12th of December 2015
Studio 19/3/2015
Benacre Birch 1 2015 Oil on panel 2.43m x 1.82m
My2015 project, a response to the growing threat to British Trees. The projectculminated in theexhibition "When Yellow Leaves" at Mascalls Gallery Kent from the 19th of September to the 12th of December 2015
Two Years Chestnut Leaves 2015
Work in progress "Cherry Leaves" for Collateral Drawing Exhibition Ipswich.