For the past 14 months, Peter Hasted of Thanet Urban Forest has been on an inspiring journey, collaborating with artist Anya Gallaccio and the team at Turner Contemporary in Margate for her latest exhibition, Preserve. This showcase explores Gallaccio’s ongoing dialogue between art and nature, with a focus on the rich natural heritage of Kent. Part of the exhibition revisits Anya’s iconic 2008 installation, The Inner Space Within, which originally featured a chestnut tree installation at Camden Art Centre in London. This time, Anya was drawn to the idea of working with a dying tree, a symbol of the environmental pressures on native species and a testament to resilience in the face of decline. After considering many afflicted trees in the region, she chose an ash (Fraxinus excelsior) stricken with ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus), a choice steeped in symbolism. The ash tree, woven deeply into the British landscape, seemed the perfect subject for the exhibition’s theme, with its haunting beauty and the unique forms it adopts as the disease progresses.
Over the course of a year, we embarked on several site visits and held thoughtful discussions with landowners to find the ideal specimen. Our first exploration led us north London to Great Westwood Equestrian Park, where we met Paul from Langley Logs. His woodland, sadly scarred by ash dieback, are nestled close to local film studios, where he has supplied trees as props and the woodland as sets for many different productions. Pauls experience as well as the location was promising, but logistics ultimately brought us back closer to home, where we connected with estates more local to Kent. Among them, Lees Court Estate, lying between Canterbury and Faversham, stood out, with its swathes of ash trees decimated by the fungal pathogen. From here, Anya found her tree.
Image: © Wayne Ewell from About Trees
Image: © Wayne Ewell from About Trees
The chosen ash was nothing short of remarkable, with a decrepit structure: intricate branches, a ‘cuckoo tree’ emerging from a crux, hollow voids, a display of fused natural bracing and reactive growth. Mosses and lichens were thriving in the cracks of the bark, alongside advanced compartmentalization of decaying wood—a profound marker of ash dieback’s march. In September, after months of careful planning and detailed measurements, the ash was delicately dismantled, piece by piece, to preserve the intricacy of its form for its new life inside the gallery.
With each section transported to the gallery, the tree was reunited as the new ‘Open Space Within,’ where the segments of the crown were brought back together, pinned and supported with wire ropes hung from the celling, restoring it to its original stance. Yet, in its reconstitution, it’s clear it is no longer the same tree; it stands as a fragmented sculpture, its fragility reflecting the damage it has endured—a ghostly reminder of its past life and an echo of losses yet to come. The cable and steel pins serve as both support and symbol, suggesting the fine line between preservation and constraint.
Trees have long been symbols of wisdom, perhaps because of their grandeur, their long lifespans, and their intricate branching patterns, which mirror our own explorations of knowledge. This ash tree, now standing within the gallery space, speaks to this timeless connection and serves as a reminder of the need to protect the natural world we depend upon. Anya’s work, in its quiet beauty and fragility, is a call to recognize the beauty in decay and the urgency in conservation. The Preserve exhibition serves as a tribute to nature’s tenacity, even in decline, and invites us to contemplate the delicate balance between life, art, and the environment.
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