Eucalyptus’ talk

29/03/2023 - 14/04/2023,
Willesden gallery,
London

                                                                            

Exhibition

From The Metamorphosis to Animal Farm, there has been a literary practice of observing or  satirising human‘s social relations from a third party perspective that is distinct from that of  humans. Nature has a different structure to human society, and if we look at it as a new narrative  and 'decode' it in the context of capitalist social issues, we may be able to get answers that are quite  different from the dominant human perspective. As Roland Barthes noted, ‘ narrative is  international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself ‘ (Sontag, 1982). A  pluralistic narrative enables us to understand more fully the state we are in.

Eucalyptus has always been associated with strength, abundance, and positive meanings. However,  due to the burning of hills and monocultures prior to plantations, the term 'Eucalyptisation' is used  to describe a situation of uncontrolled expansion, using the “green” image deceptively to destroy  water resources and the native economic and cultural environment(WRM Bulletin 150, 2010). Yet  the eucalyptus itself is so innocent to be a passive coloniser, the value of its life is measured by  humans and exploited by capitalism. There is a similar irony in Seamus Heaney's 'The Death of a  Naturalist’.

'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in town
Where they consider death unnatural
But on well-run farms pests have to be kept down.
(Heaney, 1966 p.2)

Therefore, the Goblin Core, as a London based curatorial team, graduated from UAL Curating and  Collection, concerned with the natural world, the state of existence of non-dominant species and  marginalised cultures. In this exhibition they decided to take a different perspective from the first  person on 'nature' and 'spectacle'. Provide an opportunity for the viewer to interact with the narrator  and the humanised nature in which we live.

In this exhibition, the artists have developed this theme with their own unique artistic techniques to  illustrate how ' Eucalyptus' innocence can serve as a lever for society to accept different narratives’.  Using installations, paintings, videos, ceramics, 3D prints and photographic prints, the artists  attempted to address a wide range of social issues, including climate change, environmental ethics,  political identity, consumerism, etc. It presents a syncretic perspective on the state of natural society  in relation to nature.

       Publications
       

                    

        Artists

        Roberta Borroni
        Megan Burridge
        Dan Culbert
        Finn Dovery
        Jiayun Fan
        Zekai Liao
        Joss Nelson
        Milica Simovic
        Skye Turner
        Shuqin Wang
        Yiping Xia       
        X

 

Curators

Tian Li
Yuqi Ni
Yan Wang
Jiaming Zhao