Performing Trees
Whitworth collection exhibition
A new exhibition exploring the changing role of trees in art, showcasing more than 50 works from the Whitworth’s collection.
Across art history, the tree has often acted as the main character in works of art. Performing Trees considers trees as performers, playing an active role in shaping our interpretation of the art in which they appear. Featuring works from late 16th century to the present day, Performing Trees presents paintings, sculpture, textiles and wallpapers to show how artists and makers have turned to trees to tell human stories.
The exhibition explores how trees perform as symbols of life, embodying vitality, growth and abundance. They act as witnesses to history, standing as silent observers through generations. Some works depict trees as companions in death, linking memory, mourning and renewal. Others show trees acting as shelters and gathering places, where communities form – or as sacred presences, connected with myth and spirituality. Trees can become familial features of our inner landscape, and we can grieve their loss and destruction.
Elsewhere, trees are used as allegories, appearing in the form of The Tree of Life on textiles from around the world, and as episodes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, an epic poem in which humans frequently transform into trees. Also included are works by Agostino Carracci, Paul Cézanne, Alexander Cozens, Simryn Gill, John Nash, Monica Poole, Graham Sutherland, as well as a large-scale drawing by George Shaw.
The exhibition presents trees not simply as background figures, but central characters in what the British biologist Colin Tudge describes as ‘the grandest conceivable theatre of nature.’ At a time when climate change calls on us to rethink our relationship with the natural world, Performing Trees invites us to recognise the enduring, meaningful presence of trees – as storytellers, guardians and companions of the human imagination and throughout art history.
30 September 2025 – 4 April 2027
Image credit: Sydney Lee. The Oak and Stag, before 1949. Wood engraving, The Whitworth, purchased from Craddock and Barnard, 1960
