John R Walker
Forest Song
John R Walker
Forest Song
21 nov. 2025 — 31 jan. 2026
21 nov. 2025 — 31 jan. 2026
Image: John R Walker, Stump, 2025, synthetic polymer on polyester, 263 x 202 cm. Image courtesy Utopia Gallery and the artist.
Image: John R Walker, Stump, 2025, synthetic polymer on polyester, 263 x 202 cm. Image courtesy Utopia Gallery and the artist.
John R Walker
Forest Song
21 nov. 2025 — 31 jan. 2026
Forest Song is a meditation on trees as enduring lifeforms that hold memory and mark the passage of time.
Braidwood-based artist John R. Walker’s work is informed by decades dedicated to walking, drawing, recording and exploring nature. Walker has travelled widely, spending time in the forest and gullies in Badja, tracing the banks of the Murray River, and journeying through the expansive Flinders Ranges. He reads the land as complex and fragmentary, where experience is shaped by who we are and how we encounter places. As Walker describes, his work is about “taking his perception and transforming it into a pattern of marks.”
Walker’s practice is informed by diverse disciplines such as mapping, geological history, environmental history, mathematical theory, and poetry, all of which shape his understanding of how landscapes are formed, encountered, and remembered. Inspired by Australian poet Les Murray’s line describing trees as “stood scrolls best read unopened,” Walker captures the resilient presence of trees, evoking stories held deep beneath the surface.
Old trees stand as solitary figures within his work, bearing witness to change, collapse, and renewal. Walker records trees in all their states — expansive, grand, reaching and full of energy — through to those in decline, with missing limbs and hollow, rotting cores. Even at the end of life, these trees remain vital: supporting new growth, offering habitat, and sustaining the living systems around them.
In Walker’s practice, space is time, and landscape is something to be felt as much as seen.
In this exhibition, Walker returns to an evocative palette of rich blacks and tones of blue, a hallmark of his early career. Forest Song presents immersive large-scale painted ‘portraits’ of trees, expressive drawings and fresh, immediate monotypes that capture the movement of light and fleeting moments in time.
Walker is an acclaimed artist whose work has been exhibited and collected both nationally and internationally, and his work is held in major national and state collections. Forest Song marks a bold moment in his continually evolving practice, highlighting the artist’s enduring curiosity and deep connection to the land.
Related Events
Poetry reading in the Gallery with John R Walker
Printmaking workshop with John R Walker and Marianne Courtenay
Opening John R Walker and Kirsten Farrell + artist talk with John R Walker
12
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, 'Cloud Forest Song’ 2024. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, 'Cloud Forest Song’ 2024 and John R Walker, ‘Forest Canticle, (detail), 2025, series of monotypes printed by Marianne Courtenay. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Forest Canticle, (detail), 2025, series of monotypes printed by Marianne Courtenay. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Forest Canticle, (detail), 2025, series of monotypes printed by Marianne Courtenay. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Forest Canticle, (detail), 2025, series of monotypes printed by Marianne Courtenay and John R Walker, ‘Scar’, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Scar’, 2025 and John R Walker, ‘Stump’. 2025. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Stump’. 2025; John R Walker, ‘Cicada Song II’, 2024; John R Walker, Ash, 2024; John R Walker ‘Dry Bark’ 2024 and John R Walker, ‘Hollow Tree 1’, 2024. Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Private Collections. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Cicada Song II’, 2024; John R Walker, Ash, 2024and John R Walker ‘Dry Bark’, 2024. Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Private Collections. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Hollow Tree 1’, 2024; John R Walker, ‘Tree songs, Cicada Song. 2024 and John R Walker, ‘Judgement Tree’, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Judgement Tree’, 2024; John R Walker, ‘Nest’, 2024; John R Walker, ‘Hollow Tree 1’, 2024; John R Walker, ‘Hollow’, 2024; John R Walker, ‘ Percolating Light’, concertina artist book, 2025, Poetry by John Foulcher, Text handwritten by Bryan Hooper and Allana McAfee and John R Walker, ‘Tree of Nests’, 2024 . Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Private Collections. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Tree of Nests’, (detail), 2024 and Video by Sammy Hawker. Music by Alex Purdue. Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Private Collections. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Hollow Tree 1’, (detail), 2024; John R Walker, ‘Hollow’, (detail), 2024; John R Walker, ‘ Percolating Light’, concertina artist book, 2025, Poetry by John Foulcher, Text handwritten by Bryan Hooper and Allana McAfee and John R Walker, ‘Tree of Nests’, (detail) 2024 and Video by Sammy Hawker. Music by Alex Purdue. Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Private Collections. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Image: John R Walker, Stump, 2025, synthetic polymer on polyester, 263 x 202 cm. Image courtesy Utopia Gallery and the artist.
John R Walker
Forest Song
21 nov. 2025 — 31 jan. 2026
Forest Song is a meditation on trees as enduring lifeforms that hold memory and mark the passage of time.
Braidwood-based artist John R. Walker’s work is informed by decades dedicated to walking, drawing, recording and exploring nature. Walker has travelled widely, spending time in the forest and gullies in Badja, tracing the banks of the Murray River, and journeying through the expansive Flinders Ranges. He reads the land as complex and fragmentary, where experience is shaped by who we are and how we encounter places. As Walker describes, his work is about “taking his perception and transforming it into a pattern of marks.”
Walker’s practice is informed by diverse disciplines such as mapping, geological history, environmental history, mathematical theory, and poetry, all of which shape his understanding of how landscapes are formed, encountered, and remembered. Inspired by Australian poet Les Murray’s line describing trees as “stood scrolls best read unopened,” Walker captures the resilient presence of trees, evoking stories held deep beneath the surface.
Old trees stand as solitary figures within his work, bearing witness to change, collapse, and renewal. Walker records trees in all their states — expansive, grand, reaching and full of energy — through to those in decline, with missing limbs and hollow, rotting cores. Even at the end of life, these trees remain vital: supporting new growth, offering habitat, and sustaining the living systems around them.
In Walker’s practice, space is time, and landscape is something to be felt as much as seen.
In this exhibition, Walker returns to an evocative palette of rich blacks and tones of blue, a hallmark of his early career. Forest Song presents immersive large-scale painted ‘portraits’ of trees, expressive drawings and fresh, immediate monotypes that capture the movement of light and fleeting moments in time.
Walker is an acclaimed artist whose work has been exhibited and collected both nationally and internationally, and his work is held in major national and state collections. Forest Song marks a bold moment in his continually evolving practice, highlighting the artist’s enduring curiosity and deep connection to the land.
Related Events
Poetry reading in the Gallery with John R Walker
Printmaking workshop with John R Walker and Marianne Courtenay
Opening John R Walker and Kirsten Farrell + artist talk with John R Walker
12
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, 'Cloud Forest Song’ 2024. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, 'Cloud Forest Song’ 2024 and John R Walker, ‘Forest Canticle, (detail), 2025, series of monotypes printed by Marianne Courtenay. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Forest Canticle, (detail), 2025, series of monotypes printed by Marianne Courtenay. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Forest Canticle, (detail), 2025, series of monotypes printed by Marianne Courtenay. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Forest Canticle, (detail), 2025, series of monotypes printed by Marianne Courtenay and John R Walker, ‘Scar’, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Scar’, 2025 and John R Walker, ‘Stump’. 2025. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Stump’. 2025; John R Walker, ‘Cicada Song II’, 2024; John R Walker, Ash, 2024; John R Walker ‘Dry Bark’ 2024 and John R Walker, ‘Hollow Tree 1’, 2024. Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Private Collections. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Cicada Song II’, 2024; John R Walker, Ash, 2024and John R Walker ‘Dry Bark’, 2024. Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Private Collections. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Hollow Tree 1’, 2024; John R Walker, ‘Tree songs, Cicada Song. 2024 and John R Walker, ‘Judgement Tree’, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Judgement Tree’, 2024; John R Walker, ‘Nest’, 2024; John R Walker, ‘Hollow Tree 1’, 2024; John R Walker, ‘Hollow’, 2024; John R Walker, ‘ Percolating Light’, concertina artist book, 2025, Poetry by John Foulcher, Text handwritten by Bryan Hooper and Allana McAfee and John R Walker, ‘Tree of Nests’, 2024 . Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Private Collections. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Tree of Nests’, (detail), 2024 and Video by Sammy Hawker. Music by Alex Purdue. Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Private Collections. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Installation view John R Walker, ‘Forest Song’ featuring John R Walker, ‘Hollow Tree 1’, (detail), 2024; John R Walker, ‘Hollow’, (detail), 2024; John R Walker, ‘ Percolating Light’, concertina artist book, 2025, Poetry by John Foulcher, Text handwritten by Bryan Hooper and Allana McAfee and John R Walker, ‘Tree of Nests’, (detail) 2024 and Video by Sammy Hawker. Music by Alex Purdue. Courtesy the artist, Utopia Art Sydney and Private Collections. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.