The Vegetal Turn? Contemporary Art, Nature and The TreeStory Approach
Laura Robertson looks to an ambitious Liverpool-based digital art project that is using photography to document important trees – and as a result, charts the lives and cohabitation of humans and non-human species…
Nature has, throughout art history, been a powerful muse, and trees a symbol of longevity, renewal, healing and magic. In symbiosis with our recent understanding of trees as crucial indicators of climate health – trapping carbon, reducing temperatures, preventing flooding, and enriching soil and wider habitats – artists in the 20th Century have depicted trees in their work with a deepening sense of respect. In photography, a sense of grandeur can be startling; from Paul Nash’s black and white dead trees, studies for later, spectral paintings, to Tacita Dean’s Majesty, a ten-foot wide portrait of a stately, ancient oak, art has a hard-hitting way of reminding us what we have, but what can be lost.
During the COVID pandemic, who amongst us didn’t come to appreciate how generative and rich that link to nature is? This tangible connection between culture and nature, and a concern for biodiversity and protection of the natural world, is further reflected in current philosophy and cultural debate, chiefly towards prioritising ‘non-human’ needs, other beings and lifeforms, and the significance of organic systems. As art reflects life, nature-themed exhibitions, projects and festivals have become increasingly popular. Of note, Helsinki’s first biennale in 2021, entitled ‘The Same Sea’, was postponed for twelve months due to lockdown. Drawing inspiration from key biologist and activist Barry Commoner’s first law of ecology, ‘everything is connected to everything else’, the programme was a reminder that we all, matter-made, reside in the same habitat and cannot possibly silo ourselves off from other species – an idea which became acutely, painfully apparent as the virus swept the planet.
In Liverpool, galleries Open Eye Gallery and dot-art teamed up with The Mersey Forest Partnership to use trees as a way to reconnect through COVID. Inviting interested residents to get outside with a camera, and to collaborate with historians, tree professionals and photographer Andy Yates, ‘TreeStory’ became a way to simply share a story about a tree that was important to them. The resulting digital art project, exhibitions and archive of trees, some dating back to the time of William The Conqueror, “have affected the people and the city as it was founded”, says Maria Gulina, Open Eye Gallery’s Digital Content Producer and TreeStory Curator; a project “symbolic of how the Liverpool region has grown, thrived, declined and thrived again.”
TreeStory is an example of bioregionalism, a contemporary philosophy that Open Eye Gallery is fascinated with, which, Gulina tells me, “underpins an art practice that stresses the importance of forming deep and meaningful relationships with the places where people live.” It is also mirroring city ambitions; the Metro-Mayor wants the region to become net zero-carbon by 2040, ten years before the UK target of 2050; and according to combined authority surveys, 82 percent of residents agree action is needed to reduce carbon emissions. Liverpool is one of EIT Climate-KIC’s Sustainable Cities Mobility Challenge, one of many city councils and local authorities across the EU, Switzerland and the UK linking up to create a green gateway of hedge and native species planting and eco-friendly pavements.
It is incredibly challenging to translate these goals into visual art that connects beyond the surface, beyond the gallery walls, and which may have real life impact. Further development to TreeStory took place in 2022, fueled by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, as Gulina joined the team and established treestory.me: an interactive, digital art gallery and map of the North-West, allowing full open access to anyone wishing to upload a photograph alongside a virtual wall text. This gallery map is now covered with red pins, indicating parks, gardens and boulevards, that open up to reveal submissions, contexts, anecdotes, associated events, memories, creative texts and poems; in addition to downloadable activity packs for schools, community groups and families, and a historical timeline of famous trees dating from 1020 to the present day.
Planting new shoots and roots quite literally, the many photographers who contributed to this art project (including children from Rainhill High School, LIPA Primary, Egremont Primary, Northwood Primary and Wirral Hospitals’ School, plus members of Growing Sudley, Faiths4Change, Rimrose Valley Friends and The Spider Project) have planted trees and committed to their care. Gulina describes TreeStory as a “living museum” of sorts, reflecting “multiple voices about a particular social, political, economical or environmental issue, rather than that of a single artistic voice.”
Exploring TreeStory throws up real surprises. There’s a haiku and cyanotype by Sophia and Logan about Liverpool’s Cathedral’s St James cemetery: ‘Trees vibration leaves / European Poplar roots / Surrounded by graves’. Professional photographer John Davies used his ‘luminous’ portraits as a political act, overturning a development scheme in Calderstones Park and saving trees marked for felling. Lorraine Hughes submitted a crumpled found image from the family album, showcasing a beloved Japanese Cherry Blossom tree from her grandparents’ garden in Wavertree. There are a pair of Tudor Yews called Adam and Eve in Speke Hall (Anna Burton), boughs bent by the Irish Sea near Hilbre Island (Steve Starr), a twisted Yew straight out of Tolkien (Rebecca Amara), Silver Birch (The Watch Factory Photography Group) and polaroids in Prescot. There’s even an interspecies ‘marriage’ between human and Elder in Rimrose Valley Country Park – a protest inspired by Mexican anti-deforestation activism.
“Such projects are the future for not only socially engaged art”, expands Gulina, “but also for environmental art – essential now in the times of climate emergency.”
Her ultimate vision for TreeStory is to make these collective artworks, narratives, memories and identities – especially linked to this geographic area – easy to see and enjoy, and indeed, contribute to. The open access platform allows us to rethink our relationships with the ecosystem, through visual, creative and communal means. The TreeStory format could be a truly impactful way of spreading the message of climate care and the corporate, political and systematic changes so desperately needed; Gulina goes on to suggest “that this process allows the trees to become the co-creators – an important step in line with recognising the legal rights of rivers, or inviting Nature to join the trustee board of an organisation.”
It’s not outside the realms of possibility, and I wonder whether that is a step Open Eye Gallery may be seriously considering. Gulina points to a 2023 essay by Giovanni Aloi and Michael Marder, ‘Getting Entwined: A Foray into Philosophy’s and Art’s Affair with Plants’, which advances non-human theory by asking questions that are crucial for any climate-aware art project – including “What philosophical insights about vegetation could emerge from a sustained engagement with art?”
Imagining the world as a gigantic, cosmic tree, ertwined with everything around it, the essay moves us away from anthropocentrism: which, the authors state, “has considerably stifled thinking, feeling, and being in the world; it has undercut the potentialities of other-than-human, as well as of human, forms of life”, and ultimately is leading us to an extinction event.
Trees and plants become “fecund opportunities through which to rethink our relationship with the vegetal world, the land, and ecosystems.” Forget the curatorial turn – this is a “vegetal turn”, and a call to action for art organisations everywhere, globally, locally, to reconsider their focus, and their methods of working with others – human or not.
Laura Robertson
Image credits from top: Allerton Oak, Andy Yates, 2022; European Poplar Haiku, by by Sophia, photo by Logan, 2022; Eucalyptus (T167) May 2018; Speke Hall, by Anna Burton, 2022
See more on TreeStory: ‘Help us create a history of the Liverpool City Region through its Trees’ treestory.me