Listening to the earth

24 Sep-13 Dec 2026

Overview

The earth is planet, material, subject and object. It is a site of extraction, but also a source of nutrition, healing and connection. In multiple cultures, the earth is from where life begins, and it is to the earth that our mortal remains return. We understand who we were by searching under the earth for traces of the past. But the earth also carries insights into where we are now, and enables us to imagine where we might be going.

Our earliest drawings – found in caves on multiple continents – were made from earth-based pigments on the surface of the earth itself. This exhibition takes these pre-linguistic efforts at representation as a practice of paying attention and argues for drawing as a form of listening. It poses the question, ‘what might we learn if we listen to the earth with all our senses?’

Listening to the earth explores this terrain through the practices of an intergenerational group of artists who work with the earth as subject, but often also as material. These artists take action-oriented approaches to ‘listening’; walking on, handling and working with the earth, and what comes from it, is important to their heterogenous methods of making. The artworks refer to the specifics of place, pigment and methods of application – from the Saudi desert and the rural Punjabi landscapes of the Harappan civilisation to South London’s lost rivers, North Wales’s slate mountains and Cornwall’s abandoned mines. Working in a variety of materials – including dust, foraged natural pigments, ash and pieces of slate as well as photography and field recording – the artists in this exhibition use a language of drawing in its most expanded sense. The exhibition invites audiences to engage with these diverse works at a level of feeling; both collective, but also highly individual – based on their own experiences of being with and on the earth.

Participating artists include David Alesworth, Mohammad Alfaraj, Emii Alrai, Ali Kazim, David Nash, Abigail Reynolds, Ro Robertson, Tanoa Sasraku and Anwar Jalal Shemza.

Listening to the earth is curated by Hammad Nasar, Director of Programmes & Content, Ibraaz, London; co-curator of British Art Show 9 (2021-22); inaugural Executive Director of the Stuart Hall Foundation, London (2018-19); Head of Research & Programmes at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2012-16); Arts Director for the Festival of Muslim Cultures (2006-7) and, co-founder (with Anita Dawood) of the pioneering hybrid arts organisation, Green Cardamom, London (2004-12).