Seeing The Forest Through The Trees (2015)

The lifestyles of plants were a source of inspiration for this unconventional exhibition at Grizedale Forest Visitor Centre.

Seeing the Forest Through the Trees came at a critical time, as we struggle evermore to devise fair ways of living alongside ‘nonhumans’ (animals and plants). This exhibition focused on plants and their relationship to other species by featuring works by artists who examine plants’ complexity through experiments, performances, design and action.

Plants are no less sophisticated than animals and over the course of evolution they have developed their own peculiar body shapes, lifestyles, and modes of reproduction. They are active and autonomous beings perceiving the world in ways both alien and familiar to us.  The works, featured in the exhibition reveal ways in which artists are contributing to our efforts to understand plants. Celebrating plants lives and stressing the necessity to deal with them on their own terms and for their own sake. Visitors were invited to inquire into plant behaviours, their cognitive abilities, their strategies to avoid and attract others and also to fantasise and to dream.

Our future is tightly connected with plants and there is so much we can learn as they harvest solar energy and minerals, produce oxygen and food for animals and their bodies are organized as systems and networks which are decentralized, modular, and able to feed on light. The exhibition aimed to create a space to give plants sufficient recognition for what they are.

Featuring artists Brandon Ballengee, Karl Heinz Jeron, Chiara Esposito, Spela Petric, Dimitris Stamatis and Jasmina Weiss, Pei- Ying Lin, Allison Kudla, Kathy High and Oliver Kellhammer.

Curated by Monika Bakke.

Seeing the Forest Through the Trees Exhibition Guide