Ghost Forest by Angela Palmer, Trafalgar Square

November 17, 2009 by William Shaw
Filed under: William Shaw 

Ghost Forest – London from RSA Arts & Ecology on Vimeo.

It’s an amazing achievement, to unlock this space for this kind of exhibit. The crowds I saw were drawn to the sheer strangeness and hugeness of the shapes of the trees, which are supposed to link the ideas of deforestation and climate change. Angela Palmer has done something remarkable in persuading the Mayor’s office to let her use this space for this work. Its scale and ambition makes the current occupant of the Fourth Plinth look rather irrelevant.

But, being honest, I’m not sure it works that well, either as a polemic or as art; I’m not sure it left people convinced. Palmer had originally envisaged the stumps as standing straight up, which would have made it easier to understand them as the leavings of human greed, rather than the lumber they look like. I’m guessing that it simply wasn’t practical to display the stumps like that. And the huge text billboards seemed to be as much about Palmer’s struggle to realise the work, with Antony Gormley saying “the project can’t be done”, as they were about the issue of deforestation and simply added a level of  Fitzcaraldo-in-reverse hubris. (This is like dragging the rainforest to the opera-house rather than vice versa).

When artists create events like this why don’t they let the art speak for itself and instead work closely with an NGO who can make the polemic explicit on site, and far more effectively?

Anyway, please disagree with me.

www.ghostforest.org

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Comments

3 Comments on Ghost Forest by Angela Palmer, Trafalgar Square

  1. Cathy Fitzgerald on Tue, 17th Nov 2009 4:56 pm

    2. Hi Will

    It’s interesting to hear that the exhibition is accompanied by texts as well, I suppose it had to be but I had imagined it would cause more mystery and interest if the trees just appeared there. Mind you, artists are often critcised if they put out more than a ‘title’ – but often artists working across fields bring valuable information from the people they collaborate with, into novel public spaces.

    I too imagined the stumps upright but expect they couldn’t stand without the support of the ground that the trees originally held onto. It’s a sad work, and its disturbing too that bringing the stumps of such fine trees seem to be the only way to get attention. Are we so saturated with images and information that we have to go to such lengths?

    It also brings to mind other trees in exhibitions I’ve seen recently. I remember reacting strongly to some of the ‘tree” exhibits in the recent Radical Nature show in the Barbican. For example, a tree that was cut up and bolted together and then brought into a clean white gallery space. Placed alongside were artist’s notes on how interesting and beautiful the tree’s decay was. This really annoyed me – dragging greenery into galleries, to my mind is too easy as of course nature is beautiful and complex but it misses the point in how disconnected we have become from the environments that support us. Perhaps what I also find strange is that the majority of art spaces which such work is exhibited more resembles the white clean spaces of science labs – very divorced from living systems and also visited by very few. Anyway, I generally find bringing living material into galleries hard to sqaure with the beauty and interest one can gain from being in a forest or being with people who know about forests.

    Oddly enough I think the one aspect of Ghost Forest that works well is that it interupts such a prominent, iconic, and public open space – I have already seen the image flash around the world on newspapers and websites. However, perhaps I’m just pleased that an artwork that engages with deforestation has resulted in some publicity for the issues? Such works may not on their own highlight or even seek to offer solutions but they add to the small, but growing hum of ecological awareness (I’m probably too optimistic).

    Ghost Forest also brings to mind of a similar work I heard about recently (sorry, I don’t know the artist’s name or the title). It was one huge tree hoisted up by a crane and literally ‘hung’ by a rope noose in the centre of Delhi – it didn’t need any words (or a title for that matter)!

  2. William Shaw on Wed, 18th Nov 2009 1:30 pm

    3. Hi Cathy..,. good point about the way it interrupts the space – it certainly does and that is a plus.

    That suspended tree was Crash!! by Krishnaraj Chonat, part of 48oC Public.Art.Ecology and by the sound of it was one of the stand-out pieces of that.

    It was in the Best of 2008.. which reminds me, we better start choosing the Best of 2009!

  3. William Shaw on Wed, 18th Nov 2009 1:30 pm

    4. http://www.rsaartsandecology.org.uk/magazine/features/best-of-2008

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