THE BEECH

Bente Skjøttgaard

13 August – 19 September 2026

Sneak preview on Thursday, 13 August, from 16.00 to 19.00

Jørgen Bo Larsen, Professor Emeritus at the University of Copenhagen, forester and co-founder of the Danish Climate Forest Fund, gives the opening address at 17.00

A celebration of the beech 

We may lose the crisp green beech forest – the harbinger of spring that bursts into leaf every year on 1 May. Over the coming decades, climate change is expected to shift the beech tree’s natural distribution further north.

When are we going to be impacted enough to change our behaviour? Is it when we see images of wildfires, flooding and glaciers breaking up? For Bente Skjøttgaard, the beech was the final straw. 

In Peach Corner’s intimate ceramic exhibition space, Bente Skjøttgaard presents new glazed beech objects. The exhibition creates a space for reflection on nature, identity and climate change through the materiality and sensuous expression of ceramic.

In an experimental process, she explores the balance between gravity and lightness, structure and liquid form. Modelling, glazing and firing determine the expression and sensuous quality of the finished pieces.

The exhibition features a wall installation of pale green modelled ‘beech trees’, with the tall, slender trunks of the forest as well as solitary trees with broader crowns and low branches. The pieces are based on careful studies of the particular characteristics of the beech tree but were never intended to be naturalistic. Skjøttgaard’s new pieces have a certain kinship with her earlier Clouds, not least in their ramified structure, colour intensity and insistent presence.

The artist also presents a group of monumental Family Trees in a partial grid structure that creates a porous expression. The trees play host to the tinder fungus, cast in pewter. This fungus is a sure sign of decay in old beech trees. Here, it appears as an image of the emergence and adaptability of new life, as generations and species replace each other. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by Jørgen Bo Larsen that discusses the ecological and historical role of the beech. The catalogue was designed by Åse Eg Jørgensen and includes photographs of the artworks taken by Ole Akhøj.

Free catalogue on the opening day.

Bente Skjøttgaard (b.1961)

Graduated from the School of Arts and Crafts in Kolding in 1986.

The Beech is a continuation of key themes in Bente Skjøttgaard’s artistic engagement with nature as a topic and a space of exploration. After the retrospective exhibition Nature and Glaze at CLAY (2025), she continues her creative investigation of the tree as form and symbol, most recently in her series Timberline (Galerie Maria Lund, 2024) and Family Trees (Alchemists’ Convention, Vejen Kunstmuseum and Hostler & Burrows, New York, 2023–26).

The exhibition has received support from the Danish Arts Foundation and Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fond.