Deforestation of Fertility
As an archive photographer, I’ve worked with the George Wyllie Estate over a number of years documenting George’s work. In November I was invited by fellow artist Willie Sutherland and Louise Wyllie to create work in response to George’s exhibition ‘Christmas Day Down a Goldmine’. The work is exhibited as part of a large exhibition organised by Willie and Louise at Glasgow’s French Street Studios in December 2021.
Mark Osborne, Deforestation of Fertility, 2021
The exhibition, ‘Christmas Day Down a Goldmine - A New Seam’, feature work by seven distinct contemporary artists alongside works by George Wyllie opens on Friday 10th December and runs until Christmas Eve. Initiated by artist Willie Sutherland, the show is a reimagining of George Wyllie’s seasonal and sculptural exhibition Christmas Day Down a Goldmine, which was first staged in 1984. It is the highlight of Wyllie’s centenary year, which ends on what would have been his hundredth birthday, on 31 December 2021.
George Wyllie (1921 – 2012) is famous for his seminal public works of art the Straw Locomotive and The Paper Boat, which he made in the late 1980s. Thousands of people file past his Running Clock outside Glasgow’s Buchanan Bus Station every day.
The work I am exhibiting is entitled ‘Deforestation of Fertility’. It is a reimagining of George’s ‘Forest of Fertility’. 38 years after George first imagined (found) a Forest of Fertility at Hand Hallow, is still alive? Does it continue to thrive? Or, as so much of the earth's forests, has it been felled and degraded? This installation of imagines a probable reality for George's forest today in the context of the climate crisis - deforestation and fading fertility. Earth's equilibrium is lost - sterility is pervasive.
From ‘Christmas Day Down a Goldmine’, George Wyllie
Exhibiting Artists:
George Wyllie - georgewyllie.com
Willie Sutherland - www.williewawa.com
Laura McGlinchy - instagram.com/lauraglitch
Daria Zapala - dariazapala.com
Karen Suzuki - namelesswonders.jimdofree.com
Sharmanka - instagram.com/sharmanka.theatre/
