Un/Earthed: A Retrospective by Landlines Studio at Williamson Art Gallery
Birkenhead’s last stop on my mini art tour turned out to be one I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
LANDLINES Studio — the collaborative duo of Angela Stringer and Nicky Perrin — create work that feels alive. Not just beautiful, but somehow breathing.
Their retrospective, Un/Earthed, with its depth, intention, and raw elemental power, is the kind of show that makes you question how humans relate to the planet we live on. I know that sounds deep, but that’s the effect this exhibition had on me. I left with a genuine sense that my view of the earth, and how we interact with it, had shifted.
Everything in this show begins with the earth. Clay, rust, sandstone, snow, moss, soot, birch bark, fire ash, all foraged, processed, transformed into pigment, and returned to us as story.
These works are vivid, textured, and grounded, not just in colour, but in place and memory. They don’t just use natural materials; they honour them.
I stood in awe in front of the large silk hangings from In Eternal Sequence, their delicate dyes drawn from landscapes rich with myth — Holyhead cliffs, Wirral woodlands, Lud’s Church. Based on the Arthurian tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the four panels lead you through the seasons, through pilgrimage, through fire.
The fabric is scorched, dyed, gilded, and marked by the land itself. This work didn’t just represent transformation, it was actually undergoing it.
What I loved most was how rooted everything felt in care and attention. This is the kind of slow, generous art that couldn’t be made any other way than by being fully present in the world. You can’t rush natural dye. You can’t force rust to appear. You wait. You notice. You listen.
I loved that alongside the warm, muted tones you might expect from earth-based work, there were punches of colour: the rich warmth of marigold, the brick-reds, and the soft violet drawn from slate.
I also loved how they included the equipment used to create the pigments; the tools for crushing flowers, the vials of delicate powders. A large dresser packed with materials conjured the image of witches working with the earth, not against it. Creating magic with the land, in balance, in collaboration.
It’s hard to pick a favourite piece, because this entire exhibition is going straight into my top ten. But one work that stayed with me is Propinquity, An Evolution, which featured a large canvas, its bottom half buried in the ground. Seven months later, when the artists returned to excavate it, the earth had begun to reclaim it.
Propinquity commemorates 100 years of Plas Bodfa, the house where it was first exhibited. One hundred stitched crosses nod to the site’s past as the home of the Elizabeth Bradley Tapestry Kit Company — a literal and metaphorical tapestry of lives once lived there.
After the pandemic delayed its removal, the artists took Propinquity into the next phase of its journey: it was buried horizontally near a pond. The top half was exposed to sun, wind, and rain. The bottom half was left to the dark, moist ground.
When dug up seven months later, the bottom section had rotted away. The top, though faded and weather-beaten, remained. The result is a hauntingly beautiful reflection on time, process, and surrender.
Accompanying the canvas itself, was a video showing the process. I wish I could share it with you. You’ll have to take my word for how mesmerising it was.
This isn’t just art about nature. It’s art that listens to it. Works with it. Gives something back.
Un/Earthed: A Retrospective by Landlines Studio is on display at Williamson Art Gallery until 28th June 2025.