haptic/tacit: FIELDWORK

Hybridisation 2022: Apple wood, Bay, Sycamore, Cherry, wool, clay, bone china, twine, jute, copper.

FieldWork at GroundWork Gallery is an exhibition about the spaces that exist between the urban and the rural. It is about exploration, observation and presentation with field work methodologies as both a lens through which to view urban nature, and a description of artistic practice.

For this project we want to challenge many of our ingrained images of urban-rural as binary opposites. Looking at the fringes of the city where rural and urban meet and merge. Exploring spaces such as rivers, woodlands, paths or wastelands. Spaces where urban nature thrives.

GroundWork Gallery is dedicated to art and environment. Exhibitions and creative programmes explore how art can enable us to respond to the changing environment and imagine how we can shape its future.

Hybridisation

For Fieldwork, Kim’s installation has derived from observing the relationship humans have with plant life, particularly with trees, and how human intervention impacts nature’s balance.

‘Humans are restless, curious, empirical experimenters with nature. From the first use of a sharp tool to split a log or peel bark, communities have explored and exploited trees over the best part of a million years’ - Max Adams

Humans have a symbiotic relationship with trees to such an extent our understanding and knowledge is so deeply meshed between reality and mythology that the symbolism of trees is quite literally rooted within our history, religions, folklore and culture.

The project began with one apple tree that was cut down in 2018.