Among the trees

Flashback exhibition time! Took the Oomster to see the Among the Trees exhibition at the Hayward Gallery back in August last year, where the linking theme between all the artworks was trees. As you entered you were met by this amazing diorama-type installation made out of cardboard. In hindsight I wish I’d spent longer looking at this, but with social distancing rules and a son that walks through exhibitions faster than I do, there wasn’t much time for taking my time, haha.

You know how I’m drawn to silhouettes, right? I spotted this silhouetted couple in front of Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s filmed spruce portrait, and somehow instinctively knew that they would kiss - even though they were wearing face masks. In my excitement of watching it happen and getting ready to take the picture, I managed to wobble the camera. After it happened I took another picture - this time pin sharp, but of course, no face mask kiss. It has made me think of how unaccepting we’ve become of less than perfect pictures in the digital age; if I had shot this on film I would’ve been really pleased to have caught it at all (with the right exposure too - wow!). Pre-digital photography, less than perfect images were part of the visual language, and now they’ve been erased for ever. So, rather than posting the sharp photo I’m posting this as a reminder that as life definitely isn’t perfect, photographs needn’t be either.

I won’t be able to give you all the background info or tell you who made what, so you’re just going to have to take these at face value, and just go with the tree theme of all of them. This was my favourite and my take-home piece. Big it was too.

Loved the colours in this one.

And this tree, made out of typewriter type and sheets of paper put together was pretty impressive.

Cool, right?

These wooden posts had been carved back into trees. Bloody brilliant.

And this photo ticked many boxes for me. Tree, window, each window pane a picture frame? Noice.

These little guys were such a bright matt red. My VSCO filter choice here doesn’t do them any justice at all.

A foggy forest in a box?! Yes please. Makes me wonder where all the foggy winter mornings have gone. Is that just a December thing - and very passé by February?

Check out the Oomster. Such a dude now.

If this was a tree how old would it be? Very. Is this picture out of focus? I can’t tell on my screen. If it is I did it on purpose. Ha. Ha.

Let’s go in closer. Hand drawn directly on the wall?! Very cool.

I really liked this painting, painted solely by making textures. In fact, this is the one I’d like to have as my take home piece now, thank you please.

This installation, glowing like a forest fire had just passed through, was Oomoo’s fave. I wince when I think of how this is what our/his future looks like, becoming more widely spread than it is now I mean. Considering life is such a shit show right now due to you-know-what, it feels a bit too intense to think of the massive turd fest that we’ve created that is hanging over the world, forgotten about for the moment, but still very much there. But I’m hopeful, as seeing how quickly science has reacted to Covid, and how we’ve basically all accepted to more or less stay at home for nearly a year to do our bit to help, fighting climate change should be doable in time we have left to avert most of it, and should be far less painful than 2020/21 has been.

Didn't mean to get all serious like that - soz. But you can’t really go to an exhibition about trees without thinking of the environment, innit. Anyway. This tree trunk had been sliced through like pages of a book. You can see it more at the top of the trunk in this picture.

I wonder what the world would have been like had plastic not been invented? We kind of managed ok without it before, right? Hmmmmmm.

So there you have it, a bit of art for you, from the in-between-lockdown-times in 2020. I also want to share a link to the Mauritshaus Museum in the Hague today, where you can walk around virtually in the world’s first online giga pixel museum. For the past week I’ve dipped in and out walking around it (want to eke it out so it lasts longer), and it’s been mind blowing to be able to zoom in such detail on the paintings. To see the actual brush strokes of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, and the cracks in the paint up close is quite something. It’s felt like the best kind of food for my soul in these endless dark and grey days that’s been hitting us more often than I think is necessary. Like, we get it weather gods - enough already.