Fio Adamson
‘Art no longer wants to respond to the excess of commodities and signs but to a lack of connection’ Jacques Ranciere
WOOD
My work on the MFA began with wood. I had been working with oak in an urban community setting for several years before starting the course and hardly knew where else to begin. I had a sense that I would work with wood and trees over the two years to come.
Encouraged to make a start, any start, I thought of connections between the ways trees relate to humans in the urban landscape, and made a drawing of trees layered with a collaged grid. It was like the map of an urban landscape intertwined with roots and branches. I read The Secret Life of Trees (the key to humanity’s evolutionary life – and our future’)by Colin Tudge, and The Hidden Life of Trees (‘what they feel, how they communicate’) by Peter Wohlleben and began to notice the underground connections between growing things. My idea for connection led me to physical bridges and I thought I wanted to focus on bridges. I researched many designs of physical bridges when travelling, when out walking, when reading books or when browsing the internet. I sketched or photographed many bridges. I spent much time in the wood workshop trying to fit together two pieces of oak and hoped to learn welding to complete the piece.
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I had designed a bridge which didn’t quite meet in the middle (with a lonesome fox) but was discouraged from continuing it as ‘too Anthony Caro’.
Moving on from solid bridges was the first stage in my MFA journey. For the Unit One show the oak metamorphosed into a piece called Tendrils, with animal heads sketched in the air by ribbon-covered wire.
This piece, called Tendrils, has wires with animal and human faces woven around a piece of oak. The colours mimic plant life, sky and water.
I soon entered the world of Object Orientated Ontology with Timothy Morton who unpicks Enlightenment thinking to reveal the underlying white male gaze beneath. His philosophy has more in common with indigenous knowledge in that he sees each ‘object’, whether human, animal, stone or leaf as being withdrawn into itself. He argues that humans need to move from an anthropocentric mode of thinking and reconsider how we see non-human animals and, indeed other ‘objects’.
Morton’s view of the aesthetic dimension is: ‘that things are physically withdrawn, irreducible to their perception or relations or uses’ so they ‘can only affect each other in a strange region out in front of them, a region of traces and footprints.'
Poetry, music and art can get closer to grasping the ungraspable. ‘An execution of a thing is not a thing’ , says Morton; “All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be” sings Pink Floyd's Roger Waters; Bjork’s 1996 song ‘Hyperballad’ inspired Morton's word 'hyperobjects' which describes ungraspable objects such as climate change.
Only Twelve Years to Go is a piece showing two foxes on a biscuit fired ceramic speech bubble. The bubble refers to speech and language, the major way that humans have seen themselves as distinct from non-human animals. The foxes, made of plastic, reference that material which is so addictive and so damaging. Foxes are now as much urban as rural creatures and I see this piece as reflecting the possibility of our being outlived by some animals who might live in the barren landscape we leave behind.
Slug One is made with PVC, wood, plasticine, wire, metallic threads, sequins and stuffed with capoc. and cardboard. Still noticing connections between human and non-human I noticed that some animals are more 'glamourous' than others and more celebrated in artwork. Slugs are a significant part of the food chain and have intimate relationships with humans, at least in Northern climates.
There's an enormous variety of slugs of various attractive colours but humans often find them disgusting, especially their slime. Humans have even become confused into thinking that synthetic materials are preferable to the slime of slugs which is harmless.
Slugs are beautiful and move in a slow dance, but still as gardeners and householders we try to kill them with salt, vinegar, beer, chemical pellets or nematodes. This whole scenario makes a hand-made shiny slug with sparkles a bit of a humorous concept.
After encouragement to make 'a roomful of slugs' I made a second one, this time with natural fleece over a cotton fabric body. I plan to exhibit it cuddled up wit the first slug.