Trees in the City exhibition at Cambridge Thrive highlights beauty of our endangered green lungs

The Trees in the City exhibition – at Thrive in Cambridge until 12 May – is a celebration and a warning by a group of artists who want to draw attention to the beauty and important function of the arboreal world.

Most of the artists belong to the Unit 13 studio at Barnwell Business Park, whose appreciation of the city’s trees has grown even as they become more challenged by both the warming world and the relentless development taking place in and around the city.

Organiser Charlotte du Blois said: “All artists trade in emotion, hope and often political commitment, which is why Unit 13 artists decided to put the exhibition together, to strike against too much concrete in defence of our green lungs.

“As someone who lives in central Cambridge I can see how rapid urban expansion is destroying ‘the green lung’ and I wanted to get a warning out there. Keeping soil safe from concrete overcoats so that it can absorb rain water plays a vital role in the city.”

One of Charlotte’s pieces, a photograph of a deceased Cypress tree, reveals the inspiration for the exhibition.

“It was 70 years old and could have expected to enjoy at least another 70 years of life or more,” notes Charlotte. “A developer next door to the garden where the tree grew, and at the time acting without permissions, cut the tree’s roots and killed it. The photograph is displayed in a coffin frame.”

Charlotte’s mixed emotions – rage, sadness, despair and frustration – informed the DNA of the exhibition.

“The exhibition is very much to do with local trees and how precious they are to us,” says artist contributor Cathy Dunbar, “ and we felt as a local studio we should be doing more to celebrate them and to recognise them. We walk past them every day and don’t notice them but we notice them when they’re gone.

“The battle to save the St Matthew’s Pieces trees showed that people care and the council rightly identified the trees have been there longer than the houses and they realised you can’t just cut the trees down because someone wants to make an insurance claim. Sometimes trees are more important than other things.”

She added: “We’re one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, we cover nature up all the time and make it ‘neat’, but the trees are our friends.

“Even if we cut one down and plant more it takes years for them to do what that one tree was doing in terms of converting CO2 into oxygen: we need to think about these things much more.”

Other exhibitors include Jill Fordham, Basia Karpowicz, Jenny Kirner, Francesco Connola, Lesley Rumble, Danica D’Souza , and Kaveh Bakhtiar.

The exhibition at Thrive on Norfolk Street ends on 12 May.

On 17-18 May the exhibition will move to Artworks at 5 Green’s Road.

All works are for sale and an auction will be held on Sunday afternoon for any work not previously sold.