The Dissenter Gallery is an intriguing place even without art. It's in the once derelict Dissenter Chapel built for non-Church of England burial ceremonies in Kensal Green Cemetery. The small white porticoed building may well be familiar to those who shop at the Ladbroke Grove Sainsbury's, its neighbour to the south across the Grand Union Canal. Renovation began in 1993 and involved turning the irregular shaped entrance hall into an interesting gallery space.

Artist John Blandy is one of the first to exhibit in the restored gallery and he makes good use of the chapel too with a DVD projection of 1,250 pastels of a tree in Queen's Park. His obsessive involvement with this tree has won him local fame, including a mention in Thorn, a recently published thriller by Vena Cork, wife of art critic Richard Cork. It opens with a description of Consort Park where "the artist who always paints the same tree is painting the same tree again".

Since March 1997 Blandy has painted a lime tree from one viewpoint, resulting in 1,500 pictures. He says he started the project - Following A Lime Tree - as a "test of skill to see how much I could find in the most ordinary, while keeping my work feeling fresh and responsive to the moment".

The DVD reveals just how unchanging the position of the tree is in his pictures, while its branches bear and shed leaves. The houses behind are also a constant, while cars in the nearby street and human life below the tree, varies. It makes eerie viewing.

The Dissenter exhibition includes pictures from two other long-term projects. Circling A Lime Tree involved moving six steps at a time around the tree, creating a time-extended panorama with the tree as the focus. These works in pastel are shown in groups of 15 to 18 panels. Seacourt Stream is a series depicting a stretch of a river near Wytham in Oxfordshire reflecting changes in the environment. It shows how, since 1974, the tree population of the riverbanks has dramatically increased.

top / main