On Tuesday 19th of July 2022, as the UK reached record temperatures, a wildfire broke out at Zennor Head, Cornwall. The fire burnt for over a week with unusual intensity, burning across the headland and through the root system, decimating the land.
In the following 13 months, eco-artist Rosie Sherwood visited the site once a month. The resulting photographs offer an intimate portrait of the land and its slow journey towards recovery.
The first year of photographs from Zennor are being exhibited in collaboration with the National Trust, funded by FEAST.
Exhibition:
Botallack Counthouse Cafe - October 13th - November 12th
Crypt Gallery, St Ives Society of Artists - November 19th - November 24th
Private View, celebrating the rangers and firefighters who contained the Zennor wildfire - November 18th 6- 9pm
Sherwood intends to continue visiting Zennor Head in the coming years, photographing the land until the story is told in full.
Zennor was not the only wildfire in the UK in 2022. Reports indicate that fire services recorded 24, 316 wildfires in England that summer. The day Zennor burnt it was one of more than 800 fires. 2022 was not an anomaly, it was part of an increasing pattern of a longer, and stronger, wildfire season in the UK. In 2019, our worst year for wildfires on record, data estimates 28,754 hectares of land burnt. These extreme weather events, so damaging to healthy ecosystems and biodiversity, have clearly come full scale to our shores. Though wildfires are something the public understand, the long-term impact of these events is less well known. The articles and reports we consume revolve almost exclusively around the fires themselves.
Zennor Wildfire takes the time to stay with the land after the fire is long burnt out. Poignant and contemplative, the photographs ask audiences to spend time in the land, to explore the loss wrought by the fire, and the quiet crawl back towards a healthy eco system.
This project has been generously supported by the following organisations. Click on their logos to find out more about them.
