EXHIBITION: Portraits of Extraordinary Trees, Illuminated, 2020

Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney (Calyx))

Combines artworks from the Significant Trees of the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney, Australia, and the Remarkable Trees of Paris and Versailles, France.

The exhibition, Portraits of Extraordinary Trees, Illuminated, 2020, brings together for the first time images of ‘remarkable’ or ‘significant’ trees that reside in famous parks in Paris and Versailles and those from the very historic, Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney. Both collections have been important to the nature-culture dichotomy, and the culturalisation of nature in mobilising artworld discourses where the meaning-making of trees has been transacted through the interweaving of the interconnected threads of their intellectual, conceptual, scientific, aesthetic, social, transcultural associations.

What makes a tree ‘remarkable’ or ‘significant’? The Mairie de Paris has a database that lists the ‘Remarkable Trees of Paris’. They categorise trees as ‘remarkable’ by their age, uniqueness, morphology, identity or social role. The Royal Botanic Gardens, which holds one of the great tree-collections of the world, follows similar guidelines in naming the ‘Significant Trees of the Royal Botanic Gardens.’ These trees have been designated as significant due to their age, with some predating European settlement or from the earliest plantings. Certain trees have scientific significance, because of rarity or association with scientific work in the Garden. Besides categories which include the ‘largest’, ‘oldest’ and ‘rarest’, some trees are considered significant because they were planted by notable persons or are commemorative trees, giving them a social value. Finally, there are trees that are considered significant for their aesthetic value as pleasing objects.

Of course, many would consider all trees to be ‘extraordinary.’ After all trees are crucial to life. Forests are the lungs of our planet and the longest-lived plants are, in general, trees. Trees produce the oxygen that we breathe, making them vital to our existence. They act as giant filters, absorbing pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide from the air and preventing greenhouse gas from being emitted into the atmosphere. Trees influence the temperature and humidity of the air through their absorption and evaporation of rain, contributing to a balanced water table and they contribute to the electrical and magnetic forces that are fundamental to the balance of nature, both through their own energetic charges and by connecting to those around them.

In 1851 the American poet and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau wrote: ‘From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind,’ and this is continuously proving itself to be true with new scientific discoveries that demonstrate the importance of trees for the physical and mental health of humans. Trees have continuously provided humans with not only immediate and practical benefits but have inspired humans to think cosmologically, earning trees a central place in a myriad of myths, rituals, and texts of religious importance.

This catalogue has two parts. Firstly, are the ‘Significant Trees of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney.’ Then on the flipside are the northern hemisphere trees, the ‘Remarkable Trees of Paris and Versailles.’ These works were exhibited at the Museum National d’ Histoire Naturelle in 2018. The exhibition, PORTRAITS D’ARBRES REMARQUABLES ILLUMINÉS honours some of the ‘Remarkable Trees of France,’ and includes images taken in the Jardin des Plants, the Jardin des Tuileries, the Park of Petit Trianon Versailles and the Arboretum Versailles-Chèvreloup. This work followed on from an invitation in 2016 by L’ Association ARBRE in France to creatively record the ‘Remarkable Trees of Paris’ in gardens across Paris. The project required permission to photograph at night in parks, sometimes after midnight, during the parks’ official public closing times. Work produced in Paris led to interest from the Palace of Versailles and in 2017 I gained permission to photograph at night in the gardens of Marie Antoinette.

Upon my return to Australia it became clear that I needed to explore the wonderful collection of ‘Significant Trees’ in Sydney, and in particular those growing in the Royal Botanic Gardens. A critical aspect of this was to develop the work from an eco-artist perspective and investigate how perceptual shifts through imaging and disseminating the images could activate change and contribute to creating new insights for environmental issues.

Through illumination, and the transformational process of photographic art making, the work in this exhibition presents trees as iconic sentinels that are symbolic witnesses to cross-cultural narratives and histories that are representative of permanence and the continuance of life as we know it. Critically it opens up artworld discourses of the natural world to exploring new ways of perceiving and contemplating the land.

The exhibition, Portraits of Extraordinary Trees, Illuminated adds to the 20-year history of my practice-led research focusing on the veneration of trees, a subject I was drawn to because of the magnitude of their environmental significance and their universal, pan-religious symbolic importance.

My creative process is similar to that of a painter, whereby I layer or glaze light onto specially chosen trees, concentrating on their individual qualities or personality. Alone and in the quiet of the night in a variety of landscapes I ‘paint’ the light onto medium format film through long exposures, sometimes for nearly an hour.

My artistic work to date has focused on ‘Trees ‘ in Australia, India, Japan, Italy and France.

I hope people can experience these trees the way I was able to experience them – deeply moved by their spectral presence at night.