A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
Photomontage
Performative Drawing
Act of Listening
About
@hortus_silvam
2021
Performance; moving image; sound; writing
‘Trees are an invitation to think about time and to travel in it the way they do, by standing still and reaching out and down.’
Single channel HD video (excerpt) with stereo camera sound
Cinematic screening: 3 mins 17 sec
the garden embraces
thoughts
trees wrap sadness
hide scars
distract and heal
and absorb
into their underground
conversations
tangled within their branches
swaying within their gentle dance
In response to words from Rebecca Solnit, the artist’s body responds to the imagined invitations from various trees in the forest garden. The title never moved beyond the working title of Fig Tree; the artist’s favourite tree in the Forest Garden, planted by her son in the Winter of 2014.
Location: Forest Garden, Suffolk, UK
The Forest Garden Project is a developing concept which exists somewhere between ecological research, quiet activism, ritual, experiment and performance. A space of contradiction, slowness and listening in collaboration with the flora and fauna. In response to a search for the ‘rural idyll’ in places of increasing marginalisation, where the rural and industrial intersect and elide; where genetically engineered technologies turn fields into labs blurring the boundaries between the natural and the synthetic. The Forest Garden Project attempts to counter this lonely place of silent disquiet which reflects a bewildered disbelief at the damage we wreak on the natural world.
edible trees, dance
© Sophie Standford