“Entering Hollow is to enter the history of our planet”.
To escape the concrete jungle that dominates many people’s lives, nothing is more pleasant than a woodland walk. Yet how many species of tree can we name? Do we know where they came from? Do we know how long they have been there? What stories could a tree tell us?
Commissioned to commemorate the University of Bristol’s Life Sciences building – inaugurated last year by Sir David Attenborough – Hollow is an installation artwork that grapples these questions and their relevancy. The intimate shelter for two, maybe three, viewers to enter at a time houses 10,000 unique species of tree. Gathered from nearly every country across the globe, the space bursts with timber cuttings of all imaginable origins: the Indian Banyan, under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment; the tallest living tree in Britain; the Monkey Puzzle that has existed for 200 million years. A vestige of life on earth, Hollow reflects the University’s research into pressures currently facing humanity, such as loss of biodiversity and climate change.
Over a three-year period, artist Katie Paterson created the work in collaboration with contemporary architect duo Christopher Zeller and Ingrid Moye. In conjunction with its opening on Monday 9th May, the designers met for a panel talk at the University, accompanied by Dr Jon Bridle – an evolutionary biologist at Bristol – who had contributed to the conceptual thinking as a scientific source. Adhering to a consciousness of responsibility regarding the environment, samples were amassed from or donated by arboretums and xylariums (wood collections) worldwide. Most pieces were already trimmed into hand-size geometric shapes, which added to and guided the stark, universal, and modernist aesthetic. Paterson’s initial vision of a structure containing every kind of tree possible was substantially downsized, as Bridle elucidated the count would be closer to 300,000 had it come to fruition. Hollow does, however, contain a selection of fossilised tree specimens, rare but equal to all the “treasures” the artwork has to offer.
Sensory stimulants perform an essential role in Hollow’s viewer experience, creating a break away from commonplace rules surrounding art by allowing for touch. The group of creators emphasised the work’s public role and so restrictions on physical interactivity would diminish its purpose. There is even a wooden seat formed into the structure, encouraging solace and contemplation.
As emphasised at Monday’s panel, the wood was rendered deliberately untreated, allowing for natural scents to permeate and fill the air. On my visit, humid rain had poured endlessly for days, delicately enhancing the artwork’s musky aromas. Peaceful and safe, Hollow situates the viewer in an imagined natural realm, a cave and combined with woodland. By effectively obscuring the interior, its narrow doorway acts as a gate onto another mystical universe. Paterson described the number 10,000 as reaching just over the threshold of imaginable amounts, a quality underlining the daunting sense of Hollow’s otherness.
In mimicking a grove, the space draws pre-existing tension between nature and mankind into play, creating a deeply energising atmosphere for the viewer. Experience oscillates between feelings of being at once miniature and goliath, isolated and united, naïve and wise, until notions of identity bleed away and nature is all that remains. Ever present is the sense of chaos battling with control; the placing of wood like stalactites dripping to varied intervals dismantles the creative hand, however, equally asserts the charm of calculated disorder. The deliberate lack of narrative allows this to expand by focusing attention purely on the maddening variety of wood before our eyes. Confronting mankind’s endless attempt to refashion nature’s bidding, Hollow knits paradoxes together, serving as a microcosm of humanity’s relationship to the earth’s ecological fabric. In those moments seated within the quasi-cave, we feel the world belongs in yet cannot be wholly contained by our human hands.
Spirituality, broached by Bridle at the panel, is unquestionably embedded in the piece. Through tonality, Hollow’s black fossils patterning the floor contrasted by amber and bronze beams decorating the walls feed the impression of jewels or gems that might surround a shrine. Votive and humble, there is stillness to the air, identifying the presence of the Sublime. Although utterly impractical, the space yearns for wavering candlelight to cast shadows that might dance across its textured surface. Sunlight instead peeks through gaps in the canopy, gleaming against the kaleidoscopic interior. Added to the sweet forest perfume, birdsong rings through the space, furthering a commune with the great outdoors.
Worshipping the earth is commonly perceived as primordial or absent-minded hippy pursuit, distant of the ‘real world’. The absurdity of such a perspective is becoming all the more pronounced. Throughout Monday’s talk, the panel was acutely sensitive to how every tree included had had a life. Every woodblock therefore contains a tree’s memories, literally in a cross section’s age rings but most prominently in an ethereal spirit. Personification of the inanimate contributes to arguments that mankind cannot claim the earth as a possession. Hollow’s attention to this idea neutralises our foolish hierarchies of being that have ingrained a superficial superiority complex in our approach to nature. Like all flora and fauna, we are diminutives of the earth, one in the millions of species. The earth is ours but only to revere and protect. We have no other address in the universe and if we did would we leave so easily? Could we bear the weight of abandoning something so beautiful as our cradling planet?
In addition to reflecting the Life Science’s research endeavours, Hollow employs a related artistic discourse, dealing with humanity’s place in the world. Conceptual realisations of ‘Land’ or ‘Earth’ art in the 1970s recognised the concern of environmental crises and set out to govern awareness by breaking away from conventions of art markets and commodification. Work like Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), a magnificent basalt pattern constructed beneath the surface Utah’s Great Salt Lake waters, is a classic example. Like Hollow, Smithson’s piece simultaneously removes itself from the paradigm of humanity whilst nonetheless reminding the viewer of our presence. Expert in landscape studies John Beardsley outlines how Land artists desired a “public with whom they can correspond about the meaning and purpose of their art”. This aspiration is evident in how Hollow invites a viewer into complete bodily immersion. Additionally, Spiral Jetty appears fully only during periods of drought, breathing with nature and speaking a language our sentience seems to have diverted us from: seasonality. Hollow will similarly expand and contract with the weather. Anticipated by Zeller & Moye, specialised glue will accommodate such movement, enabling the effect of inhaling and exhaling.
An initial reaction to Hollow found me questioning its ageing process. As Zeller & Moye clarified, the piece aims for the longest life possible but nevertheless was constructed with acceptance of wood’s natural fate. Thus, the exterior is made of commercial timber to protect the interior’s precious assortment. Life balances against death. The woodblocks being strictly speaking dead already, form an “acropolis” (to quote Bridle) that asks for preservation whilst suggesting eventual decay. There is a peculiar paralleling of comfort and unease, poetically referring to life’s universal impermanence that appropriately resonates with trees. Advocating the grace in allowing matter to return to the earth, the artwork queries our need to erect stone or metal monuments to our short-lived selves. As National Geographic records of Spiral Jetty, weathering has been intentionally allowed to address the concept. The same of Hollow serves to amplify its spirituality, bordering on deification of the environment’s ancient living bodies.
Humanity’s stamp on this planet should not be so brutal. Plastic clogs our oceans, burning fossil fuels scorches our air, overfishing and wasting food deteriorates life cycles. Hollow makes tangible the melancholia of our behaviour, reminding us that deforestation and overuse of resources will inevitably destroy the reality of what the artwork represents. Nestled as the piece’s canopy are cuts from the most endangered trees. Gazing up at matter that appears to already be drifting from our realm, the composition echoes ecological disintegration. Viewers become forcibly aware that these trimmings may unfortunately become the last of their kinds, lest action is taken.
Stepping aside from the finished piece, Hollow stresses a marginalised but increasingly crucial discussion on the relationship between arts and science. In its creative process, the work saw contributions from scientists and architects that added to and, in some respects, moulded the outcome of Paterson’s vision. Monday’s talk revealed how fundamentally enriching shared debates between supposedly contrasting fields can be. Rightly criticising the division, Bridle stated no form of study should exist in a “vacuum” as we are growing to think it does. Correspondingly, Paterson recounted her previous experiences from working with other artists; she talked of the flaws that have evolved out of solitary confinement of “genius” that many artists have self-inflicted or self-proclaimed throughout history. To quote, it “does not make sense to live in isolated studio practice” be it science or art or humanities. Summarised by Zeller’s reference to the Enlightenment scholar (a polymath who confidently bridged multiple schools), to push boundaries of mutual practice is to transcend singular dialect. Interdisciplinary study is of huge import. The example of those who participated in Hollow projects the priority of connectivity onto the international scale. As Moye explained, in conferring together online, their work “broke boundaries” by allowing a transcontinental design to be realised fluently. Unexpected turns when collaborating clearly accelerate revelation and innovation less likely to manifest without. Is that not an intellectual asset we should advance?
In academia specialisation is key, but this should not inhibit horizons. To avoid becoming stagnant, the individual, assembly or community requires refreshing waters from varied – even opposite – terrain to be incorporated. Sharing insights undoubtedly serves to reshuffle and enhance total perspective. As Paterson asserts, science and art deal primarily with phenomena, and “phenomena is everybody’s debate”. The material of Hollow, with all its spiritual resonances, best engages this business; the otherness of wood, whilst alien to our fleshy existence, is by no means unfamiliar. As Bridle explained, we share our DNA in varying degrees with every living being on the planet. We are not so separate and superior as we like to think. Wood infiltrates our world massively, yet a tree’s life sharing our air, sunlight, and water can easily remain distant. Combining scientific and artistic insight, Hollow’s aesthetic ethos exists in recalling these incremental details of lives that are forgotten as we discard newspapers or craft jewellery boxes since ‘timber’ is perceived so separate from ‘tree’.
The limitations of division and difference we impose on ourselves no longer command significance. In a world of advanced communication that allows us to speak face to face wherever we are in the world, ideological barriers of us and them, this and that should cease to linger. As Hollow epitomises, seeking convergence between science and art, or any other perceived opposites, generates remarkable outcomes. At essence the fields are merely ways of interpreting and attempting to make sense of the world we inhabit. In exploring the unfamiliar or the everyday, they need each other for reflection and refinement. Synergy should, nay, must be encouraged en masse. After all, no isolated body (person, group, nation) will ever amass the sum of all knowledge.
Environmentalism is the prime topic to advance this reform. Whether we admit it or not, climate change is occurring. Ice caps are receding, the Great Barrier Reef is being poisoned, and weather patterns are radically shifting. Such events correspond far too neatly with carbon dioxide increase for it to be considered coincidence. Though this seems like recent news – due to categorically ignorant rebuttals or denials – investment in our impact upon nature is not new consciousness; Anarchists of the Nineteenth Century, for example, envisioned a reordering of our lifestyle following the deleterious effects of industrialisation. Again in the 1970s environmentalism was brought to the fore. If Hollow teaches anything it is that collaborative efforts will unlock an effective method to address this issue. Often global warming is treated as too abstract or overloaded with specificities that its reality becomes lost on an individual. Combining the spiritual with scientific through the vehicle of art provides a powerfully emotive platform. Hollow is communicative but above all readily accessible. Its unique, mystical form alone appeals to our curiosity and can translate environmental concerns to a wide body of people.
Trees were befittingly chosen for their efficacy in this endeavour. Aside from their magnitude and abundance, their powerful voice is (perhaps ironically) in their silence. As sentinels for the minutia of our world, from bacteria to insects to fungi, trees command respect. Often living for millennia, Hollow’s cousins will witness our effects on earth, which will hopefully be for the better.
The experience of viewing Hollow asks us to commune with nature. On the day of my visit a group of primary school children were gathered around the sculpture as well. Their eagerness to search inside, touching and marvelling at the space was heart-warming to witness. Children are often linked to nature, growing and blossoming as life does in spring. Seeing Hollow enthral their budding minds confirmed to me the brilliance of its concept. To reiterate, Hollow is a relic, exhibiting the very presence of nature on our planet. It is important to acknowledge its significance for both mankind’s intellectualism and the earth’s corporeality, which (even if not in those words) clearly spoke to the children. Inspiring from a young age, art like Hollow can help us as a species to realise that without other life, our world’s soul and spirit would be entirely lost.
If you would like to learn more about Hollow and the constructive or conceptual forces behind it visit www.hollow.org.uk/. The group are currently compiling an interactive database including every species collected for Hollow, featuring botanical Latin names, genealogy, and more for you to explore.
For further interest, see the BBC’s documentary on iPlayer that follows Paterson’s activities and artistic process (available for the next 26 days). More information regarding funding and production can be found on the University of Bristol’s website.
It is currently located in the University’s Royal Fort Gardens and open to visitors everyday during the day.
speaking visuals 
