For All It Has Become, Emma Herman-Smith, 2nd March – 27th April 2013

Emma Herman-Smith has spent a year on Mull as artist in residence at An Tobar, Tobermory, an initiative partnered by Forestry Commission Scotland and Creative Scotland. Following on from her engagement with the schools of Mull & Iona in 2012 and ‘Forest Partners’, the community exhibition that emerged from it, the artist continued to explore her own artistic response to being on the island.

Wood and woodland are the theme for this exhibition, the accumulated observations of everyday extraordinary activity such as a windblown seed claiming its right to life or a forgotten post re-presented, to be admired for all it has become.

The artist seeks to share the direct experience of observation through bronze casts, ceramic impressions and charcoal drawings.

In the centre of the gallery stand two wooden posts; one cast in bronze, the other in its natural state. The former once marked a place of safety, a passing place in Bunessan, on the Ross of Mull; the latter a boundary, an edge of planted forest at Aros on the east of the island. Each describes the ravaged beauty of a tree grown and harvested for useful purpose and then left, for 50 or 60 years perhaps, to bear the full brunt of the island’s seasons. Now, the decay has been arrested, and prominence restored. At the end of this exhibition the Bunessan post will be installed in the place where its original had stood and from there will begin its own process of change.

www.emmaherman-smith.com

http://forest-partners.tumblr.com

Source: An Tobar