Three Bays Gallery presents Ecotopia – art in bloom, an exhibition that approaches the gallery’s ecological garden as a living sculpture: a place where soil, plants, insects, birds, people, and artworks form a temporary ecosystem.
During the Velt Ecological Garden Days, when hundreds of ecological and organic gardens open their gates to show how a garden can create sustainable added value, this garden becomes a laboratory for imagination and biodiversity.
Three Bays Gallery starts from art and vintage design: objects with a long lifespan, made to endure. In the ecological garden, that same logic takes shape in the way soil, planting, and water are handled: no disposable greenery, but a resilient landscape in which every layer—from compost to flower border—carries meaning.
The dialogue between the garden and the gallery is therefore a natural one: both emphasize care for materials, time, and context, from which new work can emerge that inscribes itself into a longer life cycle, rather than being consumed and forgotten.
Within this context, we present sculptures and artworks by Xander Faes, Letterwerker, Anita Nevens, Stefaan Onraet, and Senne Roekens.
Xander Faes lives and works in Antwerp. His current interest lies mainly in small, often overlooked in-between moments—moments of emptiness and pause that form a connection between two points or actions, where the emphasis usually lies. The work Intermezzo, for example, shows a brief, intimate moment: a short pause during the working process, in which one tidies up and reflects on what is taking shape. A fleeting moment that is often forgotten, yet essential within the artistic process. His sculptures are created using classical techniques and finished with contemporary materials.
Letterwerker lives and works in Antwerp. He writes on the world in golden letters, which he calls auragrams. Each auragram captures a moment of meaning: an image, a feeling, a thought. Small interventions that invite contemplation, at the intersection of poetry and visual art.
Anita Nevens lives and works in Outer. Her versatile practice—ranging from ceramics and sculpture to installations—starts from simple materials that she transforms into carriers of memory, ritual, and connection, often in relation to themes such as home and hybridity. Drawing from her international experience and later grounding in the Flemish countryside, her work explores the tension between loss and reconnection, with the past continually acquiring new meaning.
Stefaan Onraet lives and works in Ghent. He creates abstract figures that nevertheless feel familiar and close. Silhouettes assembled from wood and steel come to life within the spatial landscapes in which he places them—landscapes they in turn inhabit.
Senne Roekens lives and works in Antwerp. His artistic practice stems from an ongoing dialogue with the history of sculpture and its contemporary continuation. His work explores states of transition, duration, and deformation, focusing on the physical and temporal dimensions of sculptural form. Traces of material, process, and strain remain visible and form an integral part of the work. Roekens’ sculptures do not present themselves as closed forms, but as open structures in which past and present, stability and erosion, are held in relation.
Together, these artists make Ecotopia a place where “art in bloom” can be read both literally and figuratively: sculptures emerging among the greenery, a garden that embraces the artworks as a living organism, and an audience carried along by both.
Visitors are invited not only to view the sculptures, but also to experience how vintage design, ecological gardening, and contemporary art share a common vocabulary of care, attention, restoration, and imagination.
Practical information
Opening / Vernissage: Saturday 6 June, 14:00–20:00
VELT Ecological Garden Day: Sunday 7 June, 10:00–17:00
Open: Saturday 13 June, 14:00–18:00
Finissage: Sunday 14 June, 14:00–18:00
Also open by appointment between 8 and 12 June.