Among the Trees
Stunning exhibition at the Hayward Gallery looking at how artists have been inspired by trees over the last 50 years and in contemporary art. I must admit I though this show would be a bit dry and worthy but them were some wonderful pieces in it by artists I didn’t know and I found it a sea of calm and ideas. I loved Giuseppe Pepone’s sculptures taking a block of wood and stripping it away following the rings in the wood and knot holes to release a man-made tree from inside it. In a similar vein I liked Kazuo Kadonaga’s tree trunk remade from the thin slices of wood veneer it had been cut into. For once I thought two videos were the stars of the show and both were mesmeric and made you slow down and relax. Jennifer Steinkamp animation of a birch grove through the seasons condensed into three minutes was beautiful. I sat through it about three of four times to look in detail at particular season morphed into the next. Rodney Graham showed a sideways view of a huge pine tree over 6...