New project at Snape Maltings

 
The Foliate Bosses Julian Perry – Stevie Wishart
24 May - 29 June 2025 at Snape Maltings, part of the Aldeburgh Festival 2025
 
Artist Julian Perry and composer Stevie Wishart are collaborating to create a powerful and emotionally charged installation at Britten Pears Arts from 24 May to 29 June as part of this year’s Aldeburgh Festival.  
 
The Foliate Bosses will be installed in several places at Snape Maltings and is a continuation of Perry’s ongoing study of coastal erosion, that sees our crumbling coasts as emblems of an environment in crisis. Perry has been working for two years to create a series of large paintings recording the natural life that is falling from the East Anglian cliffs due to coastal erosion. The centrepiece of this project has been the creation of his “Foliate Bosses”; complex paintings that gather fallen trees, wild plants and mud into roughly circular images. The four works take a form that knowingly echoes medieval roof bosses.
 
Wishart, long associated with early music, has created an original sound world conflating her recordings of rare and endangered birds and her own original music. During the run of the show Wishart will perform a specially commissioned piece responding to Perry’s works and her own heartfelt engagement with the environmental crisis (23 June 2025). 
 
Perry and Wishart’s collaboration is rooted in their mutual commitment to ancient forms as the inspiration from which they create contemporary visuals and music. Perry’s paintings have a huge debt to Northern Renaissance painting (Grunewald, Durer) and Wishart is a world expert on the 12th Century music of Hildegard of Bingen.
 
Perry has spent the last 15 years studying costal erosion as emblematic of the widest environmental crisis.Wishart for this project will be creating original music inspired by Hildegard of Bingen. Tying her music to the very landscape that inspired Perry's paintings, Wishart will be integrating within the music her recordings of endangered Suffolk birds - bitterns and nightingales.
 
About Julian Perry
Julian Perry's paintings of specific locations and natural phenomenon, often under environmental threat or affected by human interventions, explore the strained relationships between people and nature. Since 2012, coastal erosion and the impact of climate change have dominated Perry's work. These themes took centre stage in works Perry exhibited in 2015 at the Venice Biennale, and in 2022 at the Southampton City Art Gallery. www.julianperry.info
 
Stevie Wishart is a well-known British composer with her roots in improvisation and early music. A performer on the violin, and the hurdy-gurdy, (a medieval stringed keyboard instrument), she has a distinctive combination of a classical foundation with a contemporary, improvisational overlay, drawing inspiration from the natural world which makes her an interesting and versatile musician. She is currently engaged in setting up Greenland Music, a project based at the Grade II* listed Greenland Fishery building in King’s Lynn, West Norfolk, dedicated to the development of music, nature and the environment.
www.steviewishartmusic.com
 
About Britten Pears Arts
Britten Pears Arts is a pioneering music, arts and heritage charity based on the Suffolk coast at two popular, historic visitor destinations: The Red House and Snape Maltings. Britten Pears Arts emerged from the creative partnership of Benjamin Britten, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, and his professional and personal partner, singer Peter Pears. Britten and Pears shared a progressive vision for music and the arts to be useful, helping people enhance and bring joy into their lives. Britten and Pears’ vision inspires all our activity, from work with the local communities to our national leadership roles in the fields of talent development and music, health and wellbeing. www.brittenpearsarts.org
 
 
Image: Work in progress, Foliate Boss III, Oil on panel 157 x 122cm