This exhibition is called “A Memory of Elephants” after their collective noun but unusually, most of the paintings are of individuals. Age, gender, size, beauty, character, eccentricity, boldness, or the lack of it, defined each elephant I was lucky enough to meet to such an extent that I felt compelled to create a gallery of individuals, some famous or even infamous, but all of whom had made a distinct impression in very different ways.

(Mark Adlington)

In September John Martin Gallery will present Mark Adlington’s latest exhibition, ‘A Memory of Elephants’. Over the last two years Mark Adlington spent in Kenya and Namibia where he was granted exceptional access to herds of elephant and a unique opportunity to become familiar with some of the most famous individual elephants alive.

For Adlington, the exhibition lets him describe elephant conservation not in terms of declining numbers, but through an understanding of some of the magnificent individuals that make up those herds. The exhibition brings together drawings made in the field alongside a powerful series of oil portraits, sales of which will help support the work of the conservation charity, Big Life.