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Why This Exhibition about Tree is The Wake Up Call
I’m a Londoner and it’s been five months since I was in Central London last.
As lock down rules eased, the first thing I decided to do was to go to a museum on a hot, sunny day. I thought maybe people will spend more time in pubs than an indoor exhibition about trees. Afterall, there’re many trees in Hyde Park.
I was right.
The exhibition curated by Southbank Centre is called “Among the Trees” and it featured art about trees around the world. You can find sculptures of trees by the infamous Giuseppe Penone, a disturbing photo of a tree by the director of 12 Years A Slave Steve McQueen — people used to hang slaves on this tree, and they were then buried directly under it.
The exhibition talks about political and environmental issues. Each second there’s a forest the size of a football pitch being burned down. A tree takes hundreds of years to grow. An artist found trees started to grow underneath the soil and in between wall cracks, fences and wires.
It seems dark but the curator has done a fine job in telling you how beautiful trees are, the gallery makes you fall in love with them, like ladies with roses. I felt tranquil there.
