♫ Claire ♫
Ghost Forest - Dahoma
Ghost Forest is a major art installation consisting of 10 primary rainforest tree stumps which were brought to Europe from a commercially logged forest in Western Africa by the artist Angela Palmer (www.angelaspalmer.com). The work is intended to highlight the alarming depletion of the world's natural resources, and in particular the continued rate of deforestation. Today, a tropical forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds, impacting on climate, biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous people. The trees in Ghost Forest - most of which fell naturally in storms - are intended to represent rainforest trees worldwide; the absence of their trunks is presented as a metaphor for the removal of the world's lungs caused through the loss of our forests.
The tree stumps were exhibited as a “ghost forest” in Trafalgar Square in London last November (2009), and then in Copenhagen in December (2009) during the UN's Climate Change Conference. In July this year (2010) Ghost Forest will be exhibited for a year on the lawn of Oxford University's Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum. The exhibition will coincide with the Museum of Natural History's 150th anniversary this year, and the UN's International Year of Biodiversity. In 2011 it is the UN's International Year of Forests.
Dahoma (Piptadeniastrum africanum) - this tree was logged in the Suhuma Forest, Western Ghana. The name Dahoma comes from Da (sleep), Ho (there), Ma (provides or gives). The name was given by hunters and farmers who used the spaces provided by the huge buttresses as a sleeping place.
Ghost Forest - Dahoma
Ghost Forest is a major art installation consisting of 10 primary rainforest tree stumps which were brought to Europe from a commercially logged forest in Western Africa by the artist Angela Palmer (www.angelaspalmer.com). The work is intended to highlight the alarming depletion of the world's natural resources, and in particular the continued rate of deforestation. Today, a tropical forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds, impacting on climate, biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous people. The trees in Ghost Forest - most of which fell naturally in storms - are intended to represent rainforest trees worldwide; the absence of their trunks is presented as a metaphor for the removal of the world's lungs caused through the loss of our forests.
The tree stumps were exhibited as a “ghost forest” in Trafalgar Square in London last November (2009), and then in Copenhagen in December (2009) during the UN's Climate Change Conference. In July this year (2010) Ghost Forest will be exhibited for a year on the lawn of Oxford University's Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum. The exhibition will coincide with the Museum of Natural History's 150th anniversary this year, and the UN's International Year of Biodiversity. In 2011 it is the UN's International Year of Forests.
Dahoma (Piptadeniastrum africanum) - this tree was logged in the Suhuma Forest, Western Ghana. The name Dahoma comes from Da (sleep), Ho (there), Ma (provides or gives). The name was given by hunters and farmers who used the spaces provided by the huge buttresses as a sleeping place.