Birds of the New Forest by Geoffrey Dashwood and Chris Packham

About

Internationally-renowned Sculptor Geoffrey Dashwood and TV presenter and Naturalist Chris Packham are teaming up to present a stunning inaugural exhibition in our new gallery spaces.
Birds of the New Forest will feature Dashwood’s beautiful bronze sculptures of birds that currently live in the New Forest, others that used to live here, and species that may return in the future.
The exhibition will be curated by writer, TV presenter and campaigner Chris Packham who is a friend and long-time admirer of Geoffrey Dashwood’s work:

“Dashwood’s technique is reductive; all but a few surface details are abandoned leaving a simplicity which emphatically strengthens each work. With aplomb and authority he reproduces the functional aesthetics of nature’s machines in a graphic and economical style, which with a sympathetic amalgam of internal form, aero dynamism and known physiology, produces all the tension, the sensuality, all the absolute beauty of living birds. These sculptures defy the need for anatomical or ornithological justification – they are quite simply ravishing.” Chris Packham
Dashwood is admired for eliminating all superficial detail to attain refined forms with smooth surfaces, enhanced by the application of coloured and multi-coloured patinas. Although his work can be placed within the genre of wildlife art, Dashwood has transcended the subject matter and his bronzes are firmly established in the wider field of contemporary art.
St Barbe is delighted to welcome Geoffrey back for the third time.