Main Exhibition Gallery
For several years Birch had been working with the form of the tree in his mixed media sculpture. In the exhibition Civic Minded, trees were variously made of fibreglass, papier maché or polyurethane and exhibited curious changes in morphology. Some had sprouted feet, as if they could totter around by themselves, no longer rooted to the spot. Others had grown in knots – literally, the whole tree was tied up in a simple bind. The tree form represented contrary states of mind, fears and anxieties; a belief in our faith in nature and beauty as much as a record of natural disaster and dwindling resources. Birch’s trees embodied and enacted psychological phases through their radical transformations and mutations.
Publication
Civic Minded
