The Real and the Imagined

This project explores the relationship between trees within the forest setting. My research began with The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben from which I discovered the research of Dr Suzanne Simard. 

Simard’s discoveries of the concept of the Mother Tree and of the underground network that connects trees and allows the forest to behave as one single organism, has fuelled this project. 

When walking in the forest I looked for and found evidence of my reading and had an enlightened understanding of my surroundings. After a walk I write and draw with psychic automatism only fuelled by the memories of what I had seen in the forest.  Through this technique I was able to connect my intellectual understanding with my raw emotional connection.

In the making process I once again worked with psychic automatism, allowing the clay to be my guide, whereby I found my prepatory work appearing in my scuptural manifestations.

To represent the coexistence of life and death within trees I use my method of casting mouldy food in plaster. I created several fragments like the piece of bread mould with which to decorate my forest floor.

Placed in an interior setting representative of both the gallery and laboratory, thus placing art and science as one - a representation of reality. The installation is surrounded by windows, teased by the external world, ‘protected’ from the weather in its own fictitious environment. 

I created the ground using clay scraps and dust that I kept when I was making the trees, symbolising the Gaia theory, where the ground and trees are much the same. I also used compost, soil, and ash from the fire place. Ash represents human interference in the forest, whereby the remains of burnt trees are placed back among the ceramic trees.

I created several mould castings which act as rotten remains of trees and represent the fungi kingdom within my forest. The mould casts fossilise the process of decay, thus leaving it stunted. I placed the boards on which I grew mushrooms underneath the soil so that mycelium runs underneath the trees as it does in the real forest.

Whilst the ceramic forest explores the relationship between art and science and imitates scientific research, the film utilises my installation and the real forest as a stage to ask the viewer to appreciate the forest and question harmful forestry practices. 

My ceramic forest is trapped indoors, symbolic of the human need to control nature, whilst questioning how authentic lab-conducted forest research is. The film looks through an abstract lens, whilst being rooted in the scientist’s  understanding of the forest, whereby art and science are placed as one, and the forest, another.

Through the forest’s collective voice, I imagine what trees would want to say to us. I looked to Helen Cammock, Joan Jonas, and various artists on MIA to align myself with contemporary practice, and to get inspiration for voice, composition and pace.