Landscape artist Rod Billington explores the fragile relationship between nature and the built environment. Will our rampant love of consumerism be our downfall, or will the next generation bring light and hope?
THE ARTIST
Name Rod Billington
Born 1942, Rochdale
Lives Taunton, Somerset
Medium Painting, Ceramics
Solo Exhibitions
Stock Gallery, London.
Cape Art, Cape Cod USA. Hiscock Gallery, Portsmouth.
Brewhouse Gallery, Taunton.
Group Exhibitions
Affordable Art Fair, London.
The Mall Galleries, London. Battersea Art Fair, London.
Chelsea Art Society (Agnes Reeve Memorial Award).
Redfern Gallery, London.
Enid Lawson Gallery, Kensington.
St. John’s Smith Square Gallery, London.
Rod Billington at the Weavers Factory, 2019
INTERVIEW
“I’ve always been fascinated by how the built environment relates to nature and how despite our best efforts, nature always finds a way to become an integral part of what we create.
We find this in a lot of imagery, where man’s transient journey through this life is wiped out and cleaned away, all evidence of where we’ve been, gone in a flash.
When I think of buildings and art, I think of the Maya civilisation. They were the most sophisticated and highly developed people in the pre-Columbian Americas, and look what happened to them. They seemed to think civilisations are wiped out every 5,000 years and I often wonder if that’s about to come true for our society.
However much we build and build, it’s only a matter of time before nature gets its revenge and takes over, because frankly we’ve pushed the world to its’ limits.
We’re taking out more than we’re able to take out safely. We’re abusing it and as a result we’re causing our own demise with floods and global warming eating up our coastline. And all that does is reaffirm the Mayan philosophy that we’re all doomed.
Whether we completely disappear like they did depends on us sorting ourselves out pretty quickly and taking our heads out of the sand and facing up to reality.
I would like to think there’s hope for us, but at the moment is just seems we’re more interested in having a new house or a new car than saving the planet. Technology sees us slowly cutting ourselves off from one another and we no longer talk directly to the outside world.
We’re also breaking down our ability to cope, if we run out of power I don’t know what would happen. We live in an artificial bubble which is about to pop.”
- Rod Billington