GHOST FOREST: A YEAR IN OXFORD
An installation of rainforest tree stumps from the Tropics
The Natural History Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum
July 9, 2010 - July 31, 2011
"We are proud to be supporting Angela Palmer's spectacular contribution to the debate on deforestation and climate change. Art communicates on a level that can go beyond data and scientific findings, and Ghost Forest will offer a deep emotional resonance for all that see it."
Moira Sinclair, Executive Director, the Arts Council England Ghost Forest is a major art installation consisting of 10 primary rainforest tree stumps which were brought to Europe from a commercially logged forest in Western Africa by the artist Angela Palmer (www.angelaspalmer.com). The work is intended to highlight the alarming depletion of the world's natural resources, and in particular the continued rate of deforestation. Today, a tropical forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds, impacting on climate, biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous people. The trees in Ghost Forest - most of which fell naturally in storms - are intended to represent rainforest trees worldwide; the absence of their trunks is presented as a metaphor for the removal of the world's lungs caused through the loss of our forests. The tree stumps were exhibited as a “ghost forest” in Trafalgar Square in London last November, and then in Copenhagen in December during the UN's Climate Change Conference. In July this year Ghost Forest will be exhibited for a year on the lawn of Oxford University's Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum. The exhibition will coincide with the Museum of Natural History's 150th anniversary this year, and the UN's International Year of Biodiversity. In 2011 it is the UN's International Year of Forests.
Moira Sinclair, Executive Director, the Arts Council England Ghost Forest is a major art installation consisting of 10 primary rainforest tree stumps which were brought to Europe from a commercially logged forest in Western Africa by the artist Angela Palmer (www.angelaspalmer.com). The work is intended to highlight the alarming depletion of the world's natural resources, and in particular the continued rate of deforestation. Today, a tropical forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds, impacting on climate, biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous people. The trees in Ghost Forest - most of which fell naturally in storms - are intended to represent rainforest trees worldwide; the absence of their trunks is presented as a metaphor for the removal of the world's lungs caused through the loss of our forests. The tree stumps were exhibited as a “ghost forest” in Trafalgar Square in London last November, and then in Copenhagen in December during the UN's Climate Change Conference. In July this year Ghost Forest will be exhibited for a year on the lawn of Oxford University's Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum. The exhibition will coincide with the Museum of Natural History's 150th anniversary this year, and the UN's International Year of Biodiversity. In 2011 it is the UN's International Year of Forests.
Ghost Forest is a carbon neutral project - following input from Climate Care, Ghost Forest's carbon footprint will be offset, see here for details.
