Paul Sloan: Psychic Souvenirs Bridget Currie: Regulators
I am the first person in the Experimental Art Foundation today, and the forest scents are heavy in the air; a kind of purity and decaying at the same time, almost tipping over into too cloying. The lights flood on and the gallery is enveloped in a yellowish glow, the sun has arisen in the forest. The gallery manager walks around turning the incense sticks so that the end that was dipped in scent overnight now releases its scent into the air. The aroma becomes stronger and more synthetic or commercially recognisable; overnight the scent of the decaying tree had taken over, and with the advent of the day it is pushed back into the background.
After the A-bomb hit Hiroshima six Ginkgo Biloba trees survived and re-budded; Ginkgos also survived the nuclear fallout in Chernobyl. The trees today are monuments of hope, endurance and peace. In the book of ‘Genesis’, after God has flooded the earth, Noah sends out a white dove from the ark to search for land. After a few trips the dove finally returns with an olive branch held in its beak—the flood waters have receded. The olive branch is an ancient Greek symbol of peace. In Regulators Bridget Currie has transported a felled olive tree into the gallery at the Experimental Art Foundation, and laid it out to rest sideways on ply-wood sticks. ‘In the clean white gallery space the tree becomes a thing, object-tree, residue or evidence of the artist’s thought process as it works at figuring something out.’ Recently returned from a residency at the CCA Kitakyushu Japan, Currie was inspired by the Japanese practice of altering the structures of plants—either by crutches