David Nash presents his drawings and a new sculpture at the winery estate Les Davids in Southern France

Les Davids, a winery estate located in the south of France, is hosting an exhibition by British artist David Nash as part of the Summer festival 'Les Estivales du Haut Calavon'.

David Nash is one of Britain's most prolific sculptors and land artists. In a career spanning forty years, he has engaged in a focused and singular pursuit, seeking to understand the nature of place through the creation of sculpture in the dominant medium of wood. Living in the rugged countryside of northern Wales, he crafts his sculptures based on both the growth patterns and characteristics of the trees, as well as his concerns for the formal elements of contemporary sculpture.

As well as being a sculptor, David Nash is a kind of Welsh gardener: he plants and raises trees, gathers stones and bark. Sculpting with materials from his environment, time and respect for nature are as important to him as his workshop tools. He sees wood as the fifth element, complementing the others: earth, air, fire and water, all of which he uses. ​
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​After several visits, David Nash created a sculpture on the edge of the Davids trail, a walk through woods and vineyards designed by landscape architect Bas Smets. During his residency, he also set up a country studio to draw the remarkable trees on the estate. These drawings will be on show this summer in the exhibition room of Les Davids.

David Nash ​
​Les Vénérables, drawings and pastels of trees on the Les Davids estate, 2024
​15 July - 18 August
​Les Davids
​Route de Banon
​84750 Viens
​France

About David Nash

David Nash, born in 1945 in Esher, Surrey, and studied at Kingston College of Art, Kingston, from 1963 to 1967 and at Chelsea School of Art, London, from 1969 to 1970.

In the late 1960s, Nash moved to the remote village of Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales, where he is still based. In 1973 he held his first solo exhibition in Wales which led to solo shows throughout the UK and across the globe. Nash works primarily with wood; copses are grown and manipulated to form domes and grids of saplings; fallen trees are carved and charred to make sculpture. The violence of his tools—a chain saw, an axe and fire—belies the grace of the final work. For Nash, the artistic process itself is deeply collaborative between artist and material, place and perception. He adopts a responsive and adaptable approach, allowing nature to dictate the direction that his works will take. He documents his progress through drawings, film, photographs and more recently, pastel stencil editions, which reflect the natural formations and shapes in his sculpture.

Nash was elected a Royal Academician in 1999 and in 2012 was artist in residence at Kew Gardens, London. In 2016 he was awarded the Charles Wollaston Award at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, and the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association's (PMSA's) Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture.

Nash's work is held in over 80 public collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, Caracas; Uffizi Gallery, Florence; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Tate, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield.

David Nash lives and works in Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales.

About Les Estivales du Haut Calavon

Les Estivales du Haut Calavon is an annual summer festival that organises literary, musical, artistic and philosophical encounters at the Les Davids wine estate in southern France. For a fortnight, the wine estate overlooking the Luberon will be the setting for talks, performances, shows, lectures and film screenings by and with important authors, philosophers and cultural figures from Europe.

​A total of 34 events will be organised, featuring more than 50 personalities from different disciplines. Highlights of the programme include the exhibition "Les Vénérables" by British artist David Nash, a festive ball in honour of the Belgian bank holidays on 21 July and a walk with Bas Smets along the trail he marked through the domain.

​But there are also lectures and readings by well-known Belgian authors such as Vinciane Despret, Bart Van Loo and Jeroen Olyslaegers.

​The theme of this year's Les Estivales du Haut Calavon is "LES VÉNÉRABLES" (venerable), focusing on recognising and appreciating the elderly, both human and non-human. The event will focus on how individuals within a biological community contribute exponentially to the resilience, diversity and robustness of the community as they age. This phenomenon can be observed in long-lived species such as large mammals and trees, such as the oak tree.

About Les Davids

Les Davids is a 320-hectare estate located in the south of France (in the commune of Viens, on the edge of the Luberon Regional Nature Park in the Vaucluse, on the border of the Alpes de Haute Provence).

Les Davids, which now has 50 hectares of vines, surrounded by orchards and gardens, currently produces eleven high-quality organic wines. Spurred on by the relentless energy of owner Sophie Le Clercq and her continuous flow of ideas, Les Davids has grown into a unique place for gastronomy, wine, art, architecture and nature lovers.