Britians Oldest Tree

Trailer for Britains Oldest Tree,
digital animation, 1.57 minutes and Perspex.

190x100x90cm

Chelsea College of Arts, Degree Show, 
London 2017.

Text written by Mia English;
Britians Oldest Tree, the spare but effective installation consisted of a digital animation, two complementary sculptures and a print out of a Mail online webpage which inspired the work.  The news story reveals the unearthing of a 5000 year old yew tree whose mystical antiquity contrasts ironically with the attention grabbing clickbait typical of the Mail online sidebar. In his digital animation we see a convincingly rendered hollow tree alongside a lifelike besuited figure who through his sliced off pate is also shown to be hollow. Floating around a grassy plot that is suspended in a sunlit skyscape, T.S Eliot. The tree and the figure might represent the eternal and the quotidian and how digital representations produce a facile continuity between them. The sculptures commenting on the aridity of digital deconstuctions.