Becky Buchanan

Becky Buchanan, Breath with the Trees, 2025, mixed media installation, 3 m x 1.5 m. Photography by Tessa Hallmann.

Just as the elusive subject of the archive painting is lost, in 2024 Southend lost over 100 mature trees. One face of grief is everything we love we will lose and another is grief for what we have never known but we expected.  Does a tree on foreign colonial soil yearn somehow for its birthright, the biblical cedar forest of Lebanon? 

Before visual or linguistic memory we develop olfactory memory, which is deeply entwined in our emotional responses. The word scent comes from the Latin root sentire meaning to feel, perceive, sense.  Cedarwood scent has been used throughout time to purify, protect and calm. You are invited to imbibe the scent here.

Joyce Kingston, Cedar Tree in Prittlewell Park, acquired in 1980, oil on canvas, 30 cm x 40 cm, Beecroft Art Collection. Photography by Tessa Hallmann.

The painting shows a mature Lebanese cedar in springtime. It appears to be in a Victorian garden although the Prittlewell Park in the title doesn’t exist. Despite searching many local parks the tree hasn’t been found. Here it is shown as a photocopied reproduction as the physical painting cannot be found in the Beecroft archive. This opens the question of how worth is evaluated in the process of acquisitions and deaccessions (taking things into and out of archives) and how reliable is memory when the flora of our environment changes.

Biography

Becky Buchanan is a multidisciplinary artist, her first love is large scale immersive installation and sculpture but she also has affairs in collage, costume and ritual.  Her work explores belonging, power and play relationships between the human and non human world, and the joyful resistance of growing up as a Queer new age traveller. She uses found materials and assemblage to create site specific artworks. 

For Reject, Reflect, Reclaim her work takes as its departure point an illusive cedar tree which has disappeared from the archive to consider ecocide at home and abroad and the olfactory perception of loss and absence.  

Since cutting her teeth in the DiY underground art scene Becky has exhibited internationally in Berlin, Poland and London, as well as at festivals including Boomtown (2016, 2024) and Glastonbury (2023). Her work was featured on the front cover of SLUICE magazine (Winter 2025). Becky’s previous residencies include Countdown Grabowsee (2015, 2021, 2022), NAVIgation Albania (2024), Queer Britain (2024) and The Palace (2024). She is a member of multiple nonhierarchical collectives including Act Up London (2012 ongoing), RA / Random Artists (2019 ongoing), the Nave (2020 ongoing), and Queer Traveller + (2024 ongoing).