NEWS
UPCOMING
GARDENERS OF EDEN
SOLO SHOW AT NOON POWELL FINE ART, LONDON
17 SEPTEMBER - 4 OCTOBER 2026
Life emerges, vanishes, transforms – Claire Milner paints the world in flux.
GARDENERS OF EDEN
Claire Milner is rapidly emerging as a distinctive voice in contemporary art, gaining recognition for work that is both visually compelling and conceptually urgent. Her practice engages directly with one of the defining challenges of our time—the impact of human activity on the natural world—through paintings that are at once contemplative and emotionally resonant. This September, her latest body of work, Gardeners of Eden, will be presented in a solo exhibition at Noon Powell Fine Art in Richmond, London.
At the heart of this collection lies a profound question: what sustains life, and what happens when those delicate systems begin to disappear? Milner explores this through layered, shifting landscapes where abstraction and figuration coexist. Forms emerge and dissolve; creatures flicker into view only to recede back into their surroundings. These works evoke ecosystems in flux, suspended between abundance and loss, carrying a sense of deep time while reflecting the urgent pressures of the present. Subtle echoes of art history linger within these works, not as references to the past but as threads woven into a contemporary visual language. Imagined, jungle-like environments recall earlier visions of nature, now reconfigured into something more unsettled and contemporary.
Materially, Milner’s work is inseparable from its message, reinforcing the intrinsic connection between her art and the environment. Working with natural pigments, she builds her surfaces from the same elements that make up the landscapes she seeks to protect. There is a quiet insistence in this choice: the medium is not neutral but embedded, carrying with it the weight of geological time, from substances formed over millennia, inserting in each painting a physical connection to the landscapes they evoke.
THE HIDDEN AND THE REVEALED (DETAIL)
Milner proposes art as a site of encounter and not separate from the world around it: a place where urgent issues can be felt as much as understood. She uses the universal language of art to foster dialogue around complex topics, while also contributing directly to solutions through the sale of her paintings. One such work ‘The Hidden and the Revealed’ will be sold to support Suriname’s 2025 pledge to permanently protect 90% of its forest cover in perpetuity. The proceeds of this painting will protect 120,000 hectares of primary rainforest in a collaboration with Art into Acres, Re:wild and Rainforest Trust.
The painting reflects a verdant tropical rainforest where creatures thrive and coexist symbiotically. Hidden and revealed native creatures include: Pale Throated Sloth, Guyanan Red Howler Monkey, South American Tapir, Jaguar, White Throated Toucan and Great Kiskadee, the national bird of Suriname.
A FIFTY-MILLION-YEAR-OLD-SMILE
Milner’s paintings resist resolution; instead, they invite a slower, more attentive gaze, where meaning unfolds gradually and the viewer becomes an active participant. In the painting Burning World the effect is particularly resonant and a sense of instability is palpable, whilst A Fifty-Million-Year-Old Smile evokes an ancient continuity, a trace of life that has endured across millennia yet feels precarious in the present. The titular painting, Gardeners of Eden, centres on elephants as both majestic beings and vital ecological architects. As a keystone species, their presence sustains entire environments, shaping habitats that countless other forms of life depend upon. Milner portrays them in a state of quiet tension—powerful yet vulnerable—suggesting that their disappearance would trigger a far wider unravelling. This interplay between strength and fragility runs throughout the exhibition, echoing broader concerns around biodiversity loss and climate change.
BURNING WORLD
Milner’s growing presence on the international stage reflects the resonance of this approach. From exhibiting in the Blue Zone at COP26 to museum shows and major commissions - including a large-scale portrait of Marilyn Monroe for Rihanna - Milner’s practice moves fluidly between contexts, always returning to its central concerns, offering a fresh yet timeless perspective on issues that affect all generations. Beyond the canvas, her commitment extends into action, forging a direct link between image and impact: proceeds from her work support environmental organisations, whilst her Active Membership of the Gallery Climate Coalition signals an ongoing engagement with sustainable practice. Claire Milner stands out as an artist not only reflecting the world we live in, but actively striving to protect it.
Ultimately, Gardeners of Eden is both personal and universal. It does not dictate solutions, but holds space for reflection, inviting viewers to consider not only what is being lost, but what might still be protected or restored. In these layered, mineral-rich worlds, Milner offers an invitation to look more closely, feel more deeply, and recognise what is at stake while there is still time.
GALLERY CLIMATE COALITION ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP
ACTIVE MEMBERS
Claire Milner has again been awarded Active Membership of the Gallery Climate Coalition, for the year of 2025 - 26.
She was initially one of fewer than ten artists worldwide who were selected for the inaugural Active Membership in 2022 and again in 2023 and 2024, along with several Blue Chip galleries, institutions and museums who have demonstrated that their organisation has implemented environmental sustainability best practice. The Gallery Climate Coalition is an international community of arts organisations working to reduce the sector’s environmental impacts, and Claire Milner has been a member since March 2021, shortly after its inception. The goal of the GCC is to facilitate a greener and more sustainable commercial art world. The aim is to provide guidelines and the necessary resources to collectively reduce the sector’s carbon footprint by 50% over the next ten years - in line with the Paris Agreement, and to promote near zero-waste practices. Learn more about GCC here: www.galleryclimatecoalition.org
ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY STATEMENT
Climate change, ocean pollution, habitat loss and the current rapid rate of extinction have devastating implications as the biggest challenges we face. We must act with urgency to resolve these critical concerns, as our planet is fast approaching irreversible tipping points. Biodiversity forms the web of life that we depend on, it is essential to the healthy functioning of ecosystems around the world and is the result of 4.5 billion years of evolution. Over half of global GDP is dependent on nature, but nature is in crisis. The main driver of biodiversity loss is human activity and climate change is an increasingly important factor which depends on biodiversity as part of the solution, so the two are interlinked. Read the full statement
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