Robert Zhao Renhui, Artist Residency

Robert Zhao Renhui is currently artist in residence at Wigwell Lodge in Derbyshire. The residency is generously supported by The Ampersand Foundation.

Zhao is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the relationship between humans and nature. We caught up with him to see how the residency is going.

What’s your experience of the residency so far?

The residency at Wigwell Lodge has offered me a rare kind of quiet – one that sharpens my attention to both visible and invisible movements in the landscape. It’s been a time of listening, walking and noticing subtle shifts in weather, wildlife and time.

I’ve been focusing on species that have moved across regions through colonial histories and the Derbyshire countryside has opened up space for me to observe how landscapes remember these displacements. One unexpected but meaningful part of this experience has been bird feeding – a practice not common in tropical Asia. I’ve started placing food out each morning and watching how local birds, like blue tits and robins, arrive reliably. This act has made me feel part of the ecology in a small but intimate way. In fact, many UK birds have now come to depend on garden feeding and there’s research showing how this has influenced their migration patterns, survival strategies and even physical traits over generations. This blurring of the line between nature and culture resonates deeply with my work.

What inspires you?

I’m inspired by overlooked or displaced lives – both human and non-human – and how they persist, adapt or evolve within changing environments. Much of my work begins by paying close attention to the margins of ecosystems or histories, whether it’s a weed growing in the cracks of a city or a species that has travelled across continents. I’m particularly drawn to long-term observation and speculative ecologies, and I see art as a way to imagine new relationships with the past, especially in landscapes shaped by human ambition, neglect and return.

In Derbyshire, I’m reflecting on how the countryside, while appearing ‘natural’, is layered with histories of control, extraction and rewilding – something that echoes across postcolonial environments globally.

What are your observations of spending time in the British countryside?

Spending time here has made me consider how the British countryside isn’t just a pastoral or romantic ideal, but a landscape shaped by centuries of use, control and narrative. It’s made me think about whether the countryside represents something uniquely British or if it mirrors wider European ideas of land stewardship and enclosure. There’s a tension between the managed and the wild that feels very different from the secondary forests of Singapore, where nature often returns more chaotically. I’ve been paying attention to how certain species have adapted – some thrive precisely because of human intervention, others in spite of it. This landscape reveals the quiet endurance of life, but also how much of what we think of as ‘natural’ has been carefully shaped by human hands.