Uta Kögelsberger exhibition at the Hatton Gallery to explore humanity’s relationship with nature

Some Kind of Love: Actions and Reactions to Living on a Damaged Planet, a solo exhibition by award-winning artist Uta Kögelsberger, will open at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, on Saturday 20 September 2025.

Through a series of interconnected works spanning video installation, photography, and sound, the exhibition continues Kögelsberger’s sustained investigation of the complex relationships between human and ecological systems in a time of environmental change. It brings together, for the first time, four major bodies of new and existing works that navigate the tensions between destruction and nurture, fragility and resilience, loss and regeneration.

Frequently positioned beyond the gallery walls, it merges direct action with processes of sensing and sense-making, revealing the unique capacity of art not just to represent reality but to offer possibilities for tangible change. This exhibition challenges visitors to consider what we would do if this moment was our last chance to choose care over apathy, community over chaos?

Julie Milne, Chief Curator of Art Galleries at North East Museums, said: “We’re thrilled to welcome Uta Kögelsberger’s thought-provoking work to the Hatton Gallery. This exhibition offers a powerful artistic exploration of climate change and humanity’s relationship with nature. Join us to experience Uta’s compelling vision of these vital and complex issues.”

Fire Complex (2020–22) is a body of works that follows the clear-up process that took place in the aftermath of California’s 2020 Castle Fire, which destroyed 14% of the world’s Giant Sequoia population. Positioned in the public realm and developed alongside a replanting initiative developed in collaboration with local communities and forest services, the work contributed to changes in forest management and supported the regeneration of the affected area with the re-planting of over 6,000 trees.

Forest Complex (2023–24) was a response to the pressures Alpine forests have come under in the wake of the climate emergency. This multi-faceted body of works dissects the complex cycle of destruction and the often failed attempts at reconstruction we have set up in relation to forest ecosystems. The work focusses on cases where the critical safety function that Alpine forests fulfil by holding the mountain together is put under threat. Kögelsberger considers the social, political and economic repercussions of these actions.

The video installation Off Road (2008–14), part of a trilogy of works, investigates how the notion of freedom is lived-out in relation to the landscapes of the American West, and the complex role it plays in the political system that houses it, through the example of a State Vehicular Recreation area and its community.

Developed specifically for this exhibition, the video installation Forest Choir (2025) has been created in collaboration with the Brussels Opera Youth Choir. The work takes its cue from research that claims that music can accelerate plant growth and strengthen their immune systems. Through sound, voice, and interspecies connection, the piece explores notions of love, care, loss, climate grief and recovery to offer a speculative proposition around interspecies communication, care and resilience.

Across these works, Kögelsberger interrogates humanity’s fraught relationship with nature: our persistent desire to control it, and our repeated failures to do so. The exhibition provides a space in which to reflect on the role artistic practice can play in affecting change. Kögelsberger’s work proposes a model of engagement that operates across disciplines and contexts, tracing the ways in which artistic practice can intersect with environmental knowledge, policy and activism.

Some Kind of Love: Actions and Reactions to Living on a Damaged Planet is open from 20 September 2025 – 24 January 2026, Monday – Saturday, 10am – 5pm. Entry is free. Visit the Hatton Gallery website for more information: https://hattongallery.org.uk/

Some Kind of Love: Forest Choir is part of Remember Nature a nationwide day of art action to celebrate Gustav Metzger’s call to stand up for nature, realising Metzger’s hope and belief in the future power of art to halt universal extinction.

Remember Nature 2025 is curated with Metzger’s original collaborators Jo Joelson and Andrea Gregson and 16 regional art partners across England: Art Gene, Baltic Contemporary, CAST, Castlefield Gallery, De La Warr Pavilion, FACT, Hatton Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Ikon, KARST, Kestle Barton, Kettle’s Yard, MIMA, Serpentine Galleries, Tate, Turner Contemporary.