Every Fallen Tree - Pt. 3: Babette Robertson

Babette Robertson’s solo exhibition, Every Fallen Tree - Pt. 3, is part of an ongoing project by the artist to document 7,000 fallen trees – a number that pays homage to Joseph Beuys’s work 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks)  (1982). 

The documentation involves Robertson meticulously recording the GPS location of each fallen tree, using a clay pressing to dually register the texture of the tree’s surface and the contours of her hand against it, and then painting the individual trees as an act of reverence. 

In combining the detached forms of satellite navigation and systematic archiving with more tactile, almost ritualistic means, Robertson’s process considers what happens when we merge two ways of knowing places together. 

While the recorded cartographic positions provide sufficient information to locate the fallen trees, the paintings and pressings assert a different set of values, acknowledging the relationship between humans and trees.