Catalogue Essay
Exploring the complex world of plant/ human relationships, The Art of Regeneration is a fully digital experience of multispecies existence and collective growth on our planet.
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The exhibition embraces the growth structure of a forest rather than being divided by human markers such as time, location or context.[1] Starting with the Roots, we enter the world of plant/human interactions, and begin to explore both how artists at the dawn of the modern conservation era felt and thought about plants and regrowth, and how plants question traditional European understandings of place. Flowing on with an exploration of the myriad ways in which photosynthesising organisms hold and challenge memory, we find ourselves in the Understory. Populated by a wide range of works, this room delves into the relationships between plants, humans, landscape and history, showcasing deep multispecies webs of existence, and the complexities of more-than-human remembering. Finally, we make our way into the Canopy, where the sun sheds light on the agency of plants and their complex connections with concepts of home and belonging.
This exhibition sets out to subvert human assumptions of ways of living, drawing heavily on the field of multispecies studies for alternative ways of interacting with, and allowing space for, the other organisms with which we share the earth. Many of the works explore the mediation of plants voices through the vehicles of human artists who create spaces for these non-human stories to resonate. The work of Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey and Ursula Münster in “Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness” and Natasha Myers’ “How to grow livable worlds: Ten not-so-easy steps” are particularly formative to the exhibition’s thought processes.[2][3]
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Following the model established above, The Art of Regeneration begins among the roots, natural disrupters that operate below the surface, changing landscapes and transmitting information. Here we find three works, two historical and one contemporary. While the show as a whole does not follow a chronological model, the two paintings are one of many possible places to start the journey. And so the show opens with Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire: Desolation and Alfred Sharpe’s A jam in the lava cleft, Hay's Creek, Papakura. Painted 42 years apart, in 1836 and 1878 respectively, the two works display shifting 19th Century attitudes towards the natural world. Both artists operated within the context of European colonial culture. Cole painted the wilderness of America as it receded before pioneer expansion and Sharpe advocated for a deeper understanding of the natural world in the midst of New Zealand settler society. His writings echo a deceptively modern sentiment, one of ecological melancholy in the face of widespread environmental loss. “I never go into the forest without seeming to hear from every bosky covert of virgin greenery the sad, sad words, ‘Morituri te salutant’ – ‘Those about to die salute thee.”[4] This quote clearly links to the classicised way in which the artist celebrates nature and mourns its loss in A jam in the lava cleft. Complimenting these works is an untitled contemporary sculpture by Brazilian artist Rodrigo Bueno from his Taken Furniture series, which subverts the ideas of home building established by the societies in which Cole and Sharpe lived.
Moving next into the understory, we find the most densely populated space of the exhibition. Through the mediums of sculpture and photography, the works explore the processes of making and holding memory within the landscape. All but one of the artists exhibited here are from non-European backgrounds, emphasising the important role plants play in a wide range of world experiences, as well as what they have to teach us about our own similarities. Works by Vandy Rattana and Bounpaul Phothyzan that uncover hidden histories of conflict in South East Asia through the connections of plant and land sit alongside Ana Teresa Barboza and Andy Goldsworthy’s careful crafts of attentiveness to the complex form and patterns of the natural world. Katie West explores how plants can connect to themes of Country and belonging and aid in destabilising power structures while Azuma Makoto’s Shiki1 × Power Plant illustrates the potential for life in a post-emissions world. The exhibition itself is designed to follow nonlinear, non-hierarchically structures, allowing the voices of a wide array of artist/plant collaborations to speak to the emotional needs of each viewer differently.
Finally the show makes its way into the canopy, and in the light of day, three works collaborate to tie together the diverse themes that sprout throughout the different layers of exhibition. Focusing in on ideas of memory, agency, story and belonging, Tim Knowles’ Tree Drawing - Weeping Willow on circular panel [100 pens], John Pule’s Atahelagi / A clear view of the heavens and Takashi Kuribayashi’s Trees create a collective space for reflection. The segmented form of Trees and the rhythmic circular drawing of Tim Knowles’ willow tree both suggest the process of dendrochronology, a physical, scientific manifestation of the forms of memory holding explored earlier in the exhibition.[5] All of the works take up space, offering a sanctuary in which to sit with profound loss as well as look to the future with a sense of playful curiosity.
Ultimately The Art of Regeneration demonstrates through the medium of the creative arts a myriad collection of perspectives on the process of rebuilding our world, and the importance of acknowledging our non-human partners in these journeys. Plants remind us that we all, even across established species divides, need the same land, air and water to survive and thrive. By looking to photosynthesising organisms for the ways in which they construct and maintain alternative ways of being, we can learn to look closer, breathe deeper, and share the earth on which we stand with close acts of attentiveness and compassion. Regeneration is an art…
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[1] “Rainforest structure,” Wet Tropics Management Authority.
[2] Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey, and Ursula Münster, “Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness,” Environmental Humanities 8, no. 1 (May 2016): 1–23.
[3] Natasha Myers, “How to grow livable worlds: Ten not-so-easy steps,” In The World to Come, edited by Kerry Oliver Smith, 53-63, Florida: Harn Museum of Art, 2018.
[4] Alfred Sharpe, “Picturesque New Zealand. Notes by an artist and tourist off the beaten track,” Illustrated Sydney News, January 3, 1891: 18, quoted in Rebecca Rice, “Colonisation versus conservation: a colonial view,” Enjoy Gallery, accessed August 9, 2021.
[5] Carleton College. “What is Dendrochronology?”