The Tree: From the Sublime to the Social

Organized and circulated by the Vancouver Art Gallery

In the early 20th Century, the Group of Seven and Emily Carr’s images of trees and forests articulated ideas of Canadian nationhood at the time as bold breaks with British tradition, claiming the rugged territory of the “new land”. Since then artists have been interested in making visible and problematizing some of these forces at play that shape interpretations of the landscape and specifically the image of the forest. The Tree looks at images of the tree as a subject of awe, inspiring reverence of the power of nature, the sublime and the spiritual along with artworks that seek to represent the human impulse to tame, control and harvest the forest. The exhibition includes a wide variety of media including video, painting, installation, drawing, and photographs that probe the manner in which the forest and the tree are represented to us in the popular media and art history. The works are primarily drawn from the Vancouver Art Gallery’s permanent collection by VAG Chief Curator Daina Augaitis and Assistant Curator Emmy Lee.

Last updated: December 29, 2009 | Print  | Share on Facebook