On what was considered to be the hottest Good Friday ever, I took my dose of daily exercise in Bushy Park. This involved a walk to Teddington Gate, then through the park to gate near to Hampton Wick before returning home.
This gave me the opportunity to enjoy the park in considerably less-polluted air and glorious sunshine. It had been a couple of months since I had explored this side of the park, so it was interesting to see how it would inspire me with my current project in mind. The following were taken with my smartphone – I didn’t take my DSLR with me as it can become quite heavy and I find that I can be less spontaneous with my photographic observations.
Inspired by my images from 20 March, I was looking for specific trees and features in the park that would feed my current thoughts about taking my concept further.
One tree that really caught my attention was this particular beast.
This is a tree that was felled a couple of years ago. The trunk is surrounded by cut branches with the leaves and small branches stripped from the ends. Also on display is the roots that have been cut through. I had walked past this tree many times before and had always intended to photograph it. To me, it appears as a surreal sculpture that could have been created by a conceptual, 3D artist.
I continued my walk through the park and came across this specimen.
I’ve always been fascinated by this tree – again it’s like a sculpture. It reminds me of Ugo Rondinone’s Winter Moon, a cast of an olive tree. I saw this at the Maxxi, the Italian National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome in 2017.
This is an aluminium cast of a tree coated in white varnish which was on display outside the museum. It is one of a series of 12 casts of century-old olive trees found in Puglia & Basilicata. As stated on the accompanying plaque, the artist’s inspiration behind the pieces is to
“tread the path between nature and artificiality, reality and fiction, and displays a sort of petrified nature, which can be considered as a monument and transcends place, space and time. This aesthetically shocking piece enables the artist to deepen the link between what is real and what is artificial.”
These are further photos I took of Rondinone’s ‘tree’.
There seemed a resonance in appearances. Also, there was a pervasive feeling and echo of the change in what appears to be real/unreal in these current times.
Jennie Meadows MA Photography 