The Plinth show addresses the status of living things, food systems, building blocks of society and impacts. The central artwork named Plinth re-addresses the balance, leading on to topics such as plant intelligence, rights for plants & reality.
Top: Wake Up And Smell The Roses, 2023. Wood, watering can roses, concrete, brick, sand, salt, steel, copper, plastic, lithium, fossils, soil, moss, lichen, fungi, bird, insects, invertebrates, crustaceans. Above: detail.
On entering Gallery 1 you are met by ancient branches from each native UK tree species, seemingly growing out of concrete rubble. At the base of one is a book entitled Plants in the Service of Man. All constituents of the world are represented here. The raw materials that made society, together with organic limbs that support our ecosystem. Many branches have a dipped head or flower, an antique watering can rose. Some stems are cut and show bright red flesh or silver metallic core within the bark. Four stems are not branches but pipes, one placard and crutch. They all lean towards the door, towards the light.
Each base is different: One soil structure from arable farmland. One, a sod of ancient woodland with leaf litter and cohabiting species. Stems covered in lichens and moss are accompanied at their base by dead bumble bees, red admiral butterfly and miniature sculptures pertaining to wounds and protection. Two further clusters oppose real fossils with dead great tit, water supply pipe and fossilised casts of human landfill.
Wake Up And Smell The Roses, 2023.
Watering , 2023. CocaCola, Pepsico, Nestlé.
Watering - Nestlé, 2023. Antique watering can, enamel paint. 39 x 76 x 24cm
In 1867, inventor Henri Nestlé is said to have saved a childs life by creating milk from flour, but the company has done incredible harm in many ways since then, and continues to do worse for humans, wildlife and the environment.
Plinth, 2023. Tree, forest floor, classical plinth. Dimensions variable (currently 420 x 280 x 260cm)
A concise radical artwork that is both controversial and unassuming. I see Plinth as the most important work of our time as it topples anything human made from the plinth in favour of a natural living thing. Today I have chosen a tree, tomorrow it could be some mould, or a fly, but it's certainly not cast in bronze. It, in a very simple way, raises the status of ecology. For some, the sculpture is so part of life it goes unnoticed, but on closer inspection it cheekily denounces a vast number of the worlds artworks and of course the status quo.
Left: The Light, 2019. Centre: Plinth, 2023. Right: Plinth Film, 2023.
Centre: Plinth, 2023. Right: Consent, 2023.
Consent, 2023. 400 year old beech trunk, organic matter, hemp rope. 175 x 200 x 70cm
Ancient tree trunk, harboring a natural fruiting mushroom, living ivy, crustaceans, algae, mosses and more. A living ecosystem in itself. It is important the trunk is tied with modern shibari in mind, a symbiotic relationship. Robust parts of the tree are under stronger bondage, whilst the delicate bits not pressured but nurtured and celebrated. I was extremely lucky to be able to involve the wonderful Nik Your2knots with whom I developed the tieing over several weeks.
The Kiss, 2023. C-type print, wood. 21 x 16cm
A beech tree and a birch tree sharing fluids at approximately four metres off the ground.
The Treachery, 2015. Wood, paper, ink, graphite. 18 x 18 x 5cm
This is a real stick, it says it's a stick, playing with Magritte to cut through the falsehoods of the modern age and bring us back to reality. Trees have pretty much single-handedly provided us with materials necessary for development of society from hunter gatherers. It is worth remembering we would not be where we are without them. Not only have they provided us with warmth, tools, bark to tan leather and make twine, charcoal to fire iron-furnaces, boats to travel and galls to make ink, they remain essential to all life on earth. We could do good to discard our ideas of dominance and control, not make them emblematic staffs either, but appreciate them as individuals, each species with their own habit essential.