• Began the year with the focus of play – pure, unconscious creativity.  The everyday continued to be in the work without thinking – drains, pipes, cutlery and the domestic but by choosing the woods as a place to install and play I reflected to see meaning in what I was doing.
  • Began to look at why I chose the woods and what they represent –
  • Looking at Jung and the Collective Unconscious which is the study of the part of the unconscious mind which is derived from ancestral memory and experience and is common to all humankind, as distinct from the individual’s unconscious.

Can’t see the wood for the trees

The forest is a symbol of the unconscious, a metaphor for entering the unknown

‘In the middle of our walk of life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost’  Dante – The Divine Comedy

To enter the woods in our subconscious is entering into a place of transformation – or a discovery into something of ourselves.  The woods is a symbol or an archetype with positive and negative connotations – yes, we can get lost physically and in the depths of our psyche – reality can be shattered at any time – we don’t see the wood for the trees.

However, the woods, the forest dark as archetype makes us active and alert.  Our senses are on high alert – we need to explore to survive  – the dark forest enables us to face our fears, explore ourselves and to delve into other worlds.  We become aware of creations which belong to another plane of existence

Time stops historically

mysterious, timeless, historic, shadows, ritual, external and indestructible life force

courage, endurance or immortatlity

under and over – roots link to underworld and the uncanny

brances reach out – facade of life

Fairytales and children’s stories have the forest as a place to create mystery, fear and double worlds – Pans Labrinth is a film that is an adult fairytale which is closer to the original feel of fairytale Guillermo del Toro’s is a fairytale of Princess Moanna – her father is the king of the underwolrd – she visits the human world and becomes mortal and dies – Her father believes that her spirit will return to the underworld so he builds labyrinths around the world for her return

In the north of spain after Franco’s victory rebels hide out in the forests.  A young girl, Ofelia goes to live with her pregnant mother and new fascist stepfather where she meets a Faun who tells her she must complete 3 tasks to prove that she is indeed the spirit of Princess Moanna.  The narrative weaves in and out of the real world and the mythical world as the house that Ofelia is now living in is near an overgrown abandoned labryinth

  • Other aspects of the forest

  • religious symbols – Buddha – tree of enlightenment – Jesus – died on a tree
  • Shinto belief – mirrors – Goddess Amagerasu
  • Fertility rights/myths
  • Greek mythology – transformation Daphne into a laurel tree, many characters transformed into trees
  • Underlying identification of trees as receptacles for spirits or souls in many cultures
  • Walpirir Aborigines believe that souls accumulate in trees and wait for a women to pass so that they can jump out and be born