Clare Stent
Host
Host
Host
Host
Host
Host
Title: Host
Date: 2018
Medium: Digital photographs and plexiglass
Artist: Clare Stent
Exhibition: Group Portrait with Garden, 2018
From press release:
A tree and details of some of the community, the natural life forms, that it hosts.
From artist:
An apple tree in a garden, hosting other species.
Lichens and mosses, mistletoe, birds nesting holes, insects burrowing
A city on a single tree, many lifeforms in layer upon layer.
Host - the body of the tree itself hosted by soil and air.
A tree in decline - host for lichens, not harming but coexisting.
Invertebrates eat the lichen, which birds use for nesting,
Mistletoe - a parasite, not killing but weakening the dying tree
Woodpeckers hollow the branches for a home.
We are in awe of trees, humbled before them, their magnificence, their age and robust stillness, communicating all the while through their roots. Yet we are guilty of their destruction to further our conscious needs.
The photographs were shown in a greenhouse, the apple tree at the end facing the viewer (the ‘altar’ of the greenhouse), 10 photos of the guest plants lined the side shelves, supplicant to the tree. They were framed sandwiched between two 2cm thick pieces of perspex giving them a sculptural quality and making it possible to pick them up to be looked at by the viewer. Thereby breaking down the separation between subject and object.
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