Heart of Oak
(2008 onwards)
Location : Victory Wood, Whitstable, Kent
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Heart of Oak was conceived in response to my developing practice and concerns over humanity's destructive relationship with nature. Since 2002 I had been developing artworks that incorporated living elements alongside the cut and constructed pieces. I was acutely aware of the irony that my own work was depleting the natural world. We take but when do we give back? Where is the reciprocation? An opportunity to address these concerns arose when Lamberhurst Farm (just outside my home town of Whitstable) was to be sold on and used as a land-fill site. Another hole in the ground to hide our excess. Thankfully here was a huge outcry from local people and the land-fill proposal was rejected at a public inquiry. The Woodland Trust then stepped in and bought the land - to become Victory Wood - the Woodland Trust's flagship woodland in their UK wide 2005 Trafalgar project. The return of Lamberhurst Farm site to mixed native woodland would create an important link in the ancient Blean Woods complex, the second largest tract of ancient woodland in the south of England.
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I approached the Woodland Trust in 2007 with my idea to create two planting arrangements of oaks within the new Victory Wood -
Avenue & Ring and Pollard Ring
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Pollard Ring
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Avenue & Ring
My idea was accepted and incorporated into the plans for the developing woodland. I devised an initial community outreach through two local primary schools -
The Endowed Junior School in Whitstable and Blean Primary School near Canterbury. I received funding from Arts Council England, Canterbury City Council and Swale Borough Council to facilitate the start of the project. I invited ecologist Liz Humpage to work alongside me in the school sessions bringing an interface between art and science to the children.
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My initial ideas were to create a managed planting scheme, training and controlling the trees over several years to take particular forms. Over the proceeding years I realised that this approach was a manifestation of the problem I wanted to confront - the intention to make the trees do my bidding, rather than listening to the trees and creating a dialogue with them.
19.11.08 - The Endowed School year 5 group visits the site and plants the first eight oaks for the Avenue and Ring.
Canterbury City CounciI arts development unit has proposed a mentor/mentee element to the project. Over the coming months I will mentor Canterbury based artist Kate Matthews.
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In 2008, with the help of many children from our local community, I planted nearly fifty oak trees in two distinct arrangements. This was the birth of my Heart of Oak project, to plant and grow two living works to become places of potential. These two places I called Avenue and Ring and Pollard Ring. Now established and thriving, they are interactive spaces, where people can engage freely with each setting. This is a project of hope, of imaginings and potentials. It is a project embracing ‘slow time’ as an antidote to the frenetic pace of this modern world. In my imagination I can see the woodland five hundred years into the future. Perhaps the origins of the project have been forgotten apart from vague stories mixed with folk lore, but the living trees have created their own relationship with the creatures and plants that frequent them – human creatures included. This project contains the spirit of continuity, connection with place, contemplation, being and belonging.
Diary
I have been keeping a project log since the outset, and have been devising on going short term projects involving the trees as the process unfolds, reflecting on the possible meaning of the project, ways to think about it.
Photos
I have also been photographing the trees each time I visit and am developing time lapse sequences to show the transforming woodland.
Interactions
Over the last few years Avenue and Ring has hosted a number of improvised musical events, including the UK contribution to the Global Music Underscore of 2021 and 2022. These and other interactions will unfold over the coming years as the trees develop and mature.