Endangered Plants Index Degree Project

Above are the final images of the degree project installation for the Endangered Plant Index. This installation took a lot of work and calculations to get right – including having to take a lot of the drawings and labels off the wall, in order to make sure that everything was aligned and fitted straight on the wall. Now that everything is up and straight however, I am really pleased with how the installation looks in the space – I think it does what I had always wanted my install to do, to be organised and look archival (aided by the method of hanging the work, which is with washi tape and brass nails), whilst also relating back to Susan Hiller’s works Monument (1980-81) and From the freud Museum (1991-96), in the way that I have used but also disrupted the grid through my utilisation of the gaps in where there are no drawings.

I did experiment with adding blank sheets of paper into the spaces, and although it made the space look more full, I didn’t feel that it carried the same weight and was as clear that these plants are missing because they are critically endangered, very fragile and disappearing from the wild all the while, so I therefore have decided to stick with my original plan to have the spaces where the labels are.

I also finished installing my Endangered Plant Index Rewilding Project yesterday, which is an installation that I am very proud of – but for different reasons than the Endangered Plant Index. The Rewilidng Project represents my biggest step away from my artistic comfort zone – creating entirely conceptual and action-based artworks, that will eventually involve audience participation as well. My installation reflects this, I feel, in the fact that it is set up to look as though there was a person working there who has just stepped out – but will be back any minute – giving the work a feeling of vitality and life that I feel that ‘traditional’ works and even the Endangered Plant Index doesn’t have.

The installation of this work went pretty much as I had planned it to, as I followed the plan that I created yesterday, and made sure that everything adhered to it – which meant that the space does, I feel, look authentic and successful. The addition of the chair, and my last minute placement of the wildflower book open on one of the flowers that I will be planting in the rewilding not only helps to create the atmosphere that someone was working there very recently, but also just completes the installation, and makes it feel real and engaging.

Overall, I am very pleased with both installations. I feel that possibly, had there been more time between the crit and the hand in date, I could have experimented with the addition of the blank pages on the Endangered Plant Index installation more, but I am nonetheless pleased and proud of what I have managed to achieve, and I believe that it shows my work off effectively and in an interesting and engaging way.

This proposal is the one that I have rewritten both after the crit and examining Agnes Denes’ proposals further. I have attempted to follow the same format as Denes’ used in her proposal (see previous post), whilst also keeping it much more engaging and interesting for the viewer to read (hopefully) than the previously very logistical one.

Cedarwood Walk Rewilding Proposal:

(Map Source: Google Maps (2022) Rewilding map: Cedarwood Walk. Available at: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1ZshAvKjW-vkyvubZ7mD-JgokZdraR-8&usp=sharing(Accessed: 31 May 2022))

The Endangered Plant Index Rewilding Project is founded on three main ideals or purposes: to help tackle the mental health crisis, to help tackle the climate crisis and to help tackle the biodiversity crisis that we are currently experiencing here in the UK.

Cedarwood Walk is an area in the centre of the Grange Farm estate, around 266m long, and at its widest point, around 13m wide (average 10m wide), which is the perfect location for rewilding to occur in Kesgrave. Due to its proximity to housing, tree cover should be dispersed so as not to become an issue for the residents, with trees spaced between 4-10m apart from each other, the space around them filled with wildflower seeds and grasses. As an area of land which is both boarded by houses and through which a cycle track and footpath run, the area is ideally situated to have the highest community and mental health benefits that rewilding the area could have. It is also situated directly adjacent to the main road in and out of the estate, and the planting of more trees and wildflowers will aid in carbon collection and over time will become a carbon sink, in addition to a haven for native British wildlife.

The Rewilding Project involves the planting of trees, as these hugely increase the biodiversity of all living organisms in an area, as well as creating shade in an area that is quite open during the summer and absorbing carbon emissions. The planting of wildflowers and grasses will add colour and additional biodiversity to the area, which will aid the mental health of local residents and create a more vital and vibrant feeling to the land. Although rewilding often focuses on wildlife, it is also crucial to remember the importance of the local residents being able to enjoy this site in order to boost mental health in the community. This can be achieved through both getting them involved in the planting of the area, and via the installation of a bench of two along the area, creating somewhere where people are able to go and enjoy being in nature, whilst also not being far from their houses.

Update: 08/06/22: I also added the ‘wildflowers’ book open on the desk, at the page of the Ragged Robin, which is one of the wildflowers listed on the seed pack, that I hope to use in the rewilding of Cedarwood Walk. I think this adds an extra element of context and vitality to the work, which I enjoy.

Although I am confident in my plan for the rewilding area of my work, I found over the past few days of install, that I needed to have a better, more concrete plan of how I was going to install it exactly, rather than turning up and arranging it on the day. So this morning I annotated on an image of the space as it stood yesterday evening, planning which additional elements I would use in the installation.

For me, there are two key elements to this work:

1. the conveyance of my rewinding project to the viewer
2. the creation of a convincing environment – which looks as though someone has been working there and has just stepped out for a minute.

The first is crucial as I need the viewer to understand the work and the reason behind it, as well as the distinction between the two works. The second isomer important to me than to my viewer – but it is the style of exhibit that I want to create in the exhibition, as I think that it will be more engaging and successful as a piece that way, and audience engagement is one of the most crucial elements of the work.

Planning the way in which I want to install and display the work has been extremely valuable in aiding my productivity and being able to achieve everything that I want to on time.

Over the three years of degree – and particularly these past two – my role and practice as an artist has changed enormously, and in this post, I want to examine how and why it has, and how it will continue to evolve in the future.

Initially, my practice was very limited by my preconceptions of what art is, and that the best art was ‘traditional’ (representational paintings, drawings, sculptures). However, I have developed much since then, and have experimented with a wide range of different media and forms of art, to the point where traditional methods of art, such as drawing and painting have become only a small fragment of my practice. Instead, my practice has evolved in such a way, so that it now involves a large proportion of action based work, in the form of climate activism.

My practice is really centred around climate activism, and although this wasn’t a particularly conscious decision, it has allowed me to always work on projects and work that I am passionate about, and which also has a positive and useful impact on the world – which is something that I think I have drawn from historical (‘traditional’) artworks and reflects my continued interest and love of historical artworks, such as the old masters and particularly pre-raphaelite painters. However, because of it’s centring in activism, it also means that my practice now (nearly always) involves either or both working collaboratively and audience ‘participation’, be it working with other activists, organisations or else working to create works which revolve around audience participation, such as the Rewilding Project. Stepping out from working alone was a terrifying step for me, but also a very worth-while one, as it has transformed the way I work and I always see the benefit from taking that step and working collaboratively – be it through the ability to share and create ideas together, having a larger platform to share the work, or the ability to create real change and action with your work. Additionally, working with the audience specifically involved in the work, such as with the Rewilding Project creates another, very different dimension to the work, and one that before this year, I hadn’t encountered before.

Now however, I am having to answer the question of what my role as an artist is in my practice, and how my collaboration and audience participation fits into it as well. The answer, I think, is that my role is both artist and activist – and also (especially as I progress with my life and future career (teaching)) teacher – and that these separate elements come together in my practice to create something which allows me to create change in my work and implement my passion for activism (particularly in climate and social justice circles) for good through art and artistic endeavours – including actions such as Rewilding or being part of a campaign action. As my practice is still developing, the my understanding of the relationship between my audience and my work (and myself as an artist) is also still developing, but I feel that I am coming to realise the importance of the audience in my work – not just because they are viewing my work, but because they should be able to engage with it, learn something from it and feel passionate about – just as I have done so through the process of creating the work.

I realise that this is not, in many ways, a complete answer, but that is because I don’t feel that I can answer it fully, or with great certainty. Myself as an artist and my practice will both grow and evolve as I grown and evolve, and experiment and learn more. my practice, I have come to realise, is every changing, and I hope it stays that way.

When I first heard about Wild City by Alec Finlay, I thought it was a rewilding project similar to my own – however, it isn’t – rather than planting and creating or restoring wild areas in the city, Finlay has instead teamed up with The Walking Library (who was created by Dee Heddon and Misha Myers) and the poet Ken Cockburn to refocus the residents’ attention to the wild that already exists in the city; teaching them to connect with and respect it. The project is situated in Glasgow, which is a very urban environment, but because of the nature of the city layout, it also haas many areas in which wildlife can thrive – both in parks and in brownfield sites or other neglected or historical areas.

Throughout my work on my rewilding project, I have been trying to push for more wild spaces – particularly in our urban environments (although the environments of England and Scotland are different – Scotland is a much more wild and biodiverse country than England, although it still has it’s own issues to do with biodiversity and the climate) – but reading about Wild City has brought to my attention the worth of getting the public to reengage with the wilderness that currently surrounds us, educating them about it and teaching them to appreciate it much more than they currently do. The most important group of people to engage with on this level are the young people – particularly young people aged around nine to fifteen – as at this age, children will be starting to follow the societal patterns and feel the effect of peer pressure – which all too often lead to a thoughtlessness about and carelessness for the natural world that surrounds them. Teaching these children the value and importance of the natural and wild world – not only in terms of its importance for a lovable future for the planet and a way out of the climate crisis, but also as a means of regulating our mental health.

Finley, Heddon, Myers and Cockburn also obviously realised the importance of reconnecting young people with the wild world, because, as part of the Wild City project, they ran a series of ‘workshops’ (for want of a better world), where they went out with both primary and secondary school children into the areas around their schools – places that they were extremely familiar with, and re-examined the wildlife and biodiversity in and around those areas. Alongside this, they also investigated the “linguistic [and cultural] diversity” (Cockburn, K. 2018) of the students – looking at the interplay between cultural diversity and biodiversity, through implementing the other languages in their note making, and naming of the things that they saw around them.

I feel that examining the wilderness in the city with multiple languages might also create a stronger link between nature and themselves for the children – allowing them to implement their native or ‘home’ language (the language that is spoken at home) in the exploration of the natural world – in addition to using the English names – reinforces what they learnt and experienced, which in turn hopefully creates a longer lasting and more meaningful connection with the wild world, which will shape their relationship with it in the future.

Although the community in Kesgrave is nowhere near as diverse as that in a large city like Glasgow, exploring both the current and future (once the rewilding has started) wildlife and biodiversity in Kesgrave with a similar age group of children would be very beneficial for both the project and the planet, as it will hopefully teach the children to respect and protect the natural world through their cations as much as possible – which is a very positive outcome in the climate crisis. Additionally, it would also help to create a sense of community, which is increasingly lacking in contemporary society, and which is also in part responsible for the mental health crisis which my rewilding project also hopes to tackle.

Source:

Wild City (2018) wild city | fiadh-bhaile : the walking library and Alec finlay. Available at: https://wildcityglasgow.blogspot.com (Accessed: 4 June 2022)