The lawn in front of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History stands out from the usual sights of Oxford’s stone academic landscape, though not just because the grass is open to the muddying tread of passers-by. The lawn is covered with the massive trunks of rainforest trees.
Oxford alumna Angela Palmer’s environmental art exhibition Ghost Forest, currently on display in front of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, consists of ten imposing tree trunks situated on irregularly oriented concrete platforms. Palmer calls the trunks ‘ambassadors’ for all rainforest trees facing the threat of deforestation. She deliberately selected trees from Ghana because of the country’s progressive laws towards the timber industry—only three of the tree trunks were felled by an axe; the others by natural means. In consequence, Ghost Trees offers a balanced message of dire warning and hope. True to their title as ‘ambassadors’, the trees have already had an impressive history of exposure through installations in London’s Trafalgar Square (November 2009) and Copenhagen (December 2009).
Now ten months into its twelve-month residency in Oxford, Ghost Trees seems to have grown roots in this community. On a sunny Monday afternoon tourists and local residents wander through the collection like a sculpture garden, taking photos or eating a late lunch in the shade of a six-foot tall root network. Despite the relaxed atmosphere, Palmer’s design reinforces that the exhibition is not a substitute for the community park. Polite signs remind visitors, and their children, that the tree trunks are not to be climbed on like jungle gyms. Informational plaques demand the respect for knowledge that one would more likely expect inside the Museum of Natural History than on its front lawn.
Overall, Ghost Trees evokes an atmosphere that is more like a cemetery than either a park or a museum. While the baroque coils of roots suggest life and energy, the dry and weathered texture of the wood affirms that every one of these magnificent trees is dead. The large rectangular plinths that the trunks rest on are distinctly monumental. Their haphazard orientation elaborates the cemetery metaphor, suggesting how deforestation constitutes a massacre that is both quick and indiscriminate. Through this lens the plaques for each tree read like obituaries—sober yet ‘humanizing’. Palmer endeavours to personalize each tree by focusing on the etymological origin of the species name, when possible. She also includes narrative anecdotes about the trials of transportation for particular trees. These ‘obituaries’ always end with a list of common cultural uses for that particular wood. Poetic coincidence or no, the wood from a surprising number of these trees is frequently used to build coffins.
Palmer’s exhibition runs the risk of being too straightforward. The aesthetics are largely conventional; the methods—put something on a pedestal and call it art—familiar. Ultimately the trees are transported, not transformed. The crowning glory of Ghost Trees is not its concept, as it is easily uprooted from London to Copenhagen, but rather the fortune that has ended up here, in Oxford. The organic, sculptural curves of the roots and bark stand in elegant contrast to the intricately-hewn masonry of museums, colleges, and libraries. Liberated roots reach towards the sky like a superior order of Oxford’s dreaming spires. The architecture of nature asserts itself over the architecture of humankind.
Instead of feeling overwhelmingly morbid or artistically pretentious, Ghost Trees feels right at home in a city where cryptic churches and moss-covered graveyards are casually integrated parts of history. However, this particular cemetery is not emblem of the past but rather the present and the future.
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