Trees
Jen Clarke’s PhD tentatively entitled Working between art and forestry in Scotland
Reading
Forest Tunes, The Library, 1995-2008 by Shai Zakai
Can remember when I was reading this. Think it was 9 months ago when I was trying to persuade Rozelle Maclaurin to show this important work. Located as they are in parkland, it seemed to me an interesting and worthwhile exhibition around which a stimulating series of events could have been organised, a sort of arborischool, with speakers like Richard Mabey, David Haley and Thomas Pakenham, as well as local rangers, academics from Auchincruive, etc.
I think its at the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World this autumn.
What Art have I seen?
Imaging the Forest at the British Museum
Dinabandhu Mahapatra’s Trees of Orissa. A painting on silk representing all the trees of the region of Orissa. Some are very much icons, others are more representational. This work, made in the early 1980s, was as I understood it part of a response by a particular patron to the loss of traditional crafts. It is a response to the 12th Century poem, the Gitagovinda, which tells the story of Krishna and Radha. The forest is a place where the social rules are more relaxed and Krishna can carry on with his favourite female cowherds.
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