Gayle Chong Kwan’s monolithic 11-metre high sculpture The Fairlop Oak, takes root in the Barbican, towering up through three floors into the ground floor foyers. The hybrid contemporary-historical installation draws together new, natural and man-made materials, with scores of small model houses created from waste packaging sitting atop felled branches from Epping Forest.


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The Fairlop Oak is part of “The People’s Forest”, an ambitious two-year investigation by Chong Kwan into the politics, history of protest, and people of London’s ancient woodland, Epping Forest. Chong Kwan explores the forest as a site of shared and contested resources, conflict between capital and common, private and public, and as a threshold between rural and urban.
- Exhibition dates:
- 14 October 2017 – 18 March 2018
- Artist:
- Gayle Chong Kwan
- Title:
- The People’s Forest: The Fairlop Oak
- Venue:
- Barbican
- Address:
- Silk Street, London