Blaise Drummond: Tree (Repaired),

Blaise Drummond: Tree (Repaired), 2010. Varible dimensions. Various wood (Horse chestnut, ash, sycamore, spindle, hazel, hawthorn, willow, blackthorn, birch, apple, ivy)and latex

Interview:Benedicte Brocks
Please tell me about this tree, it doesn’t look like any tree I’ve ever seen before…

It’s made of branches from about 12 different trees from my garden in Ireland. I cut off one and then another one and then joined them all together. I then took them apart again and it was shipped over here. Like a strange jigsaw puzzle, I put it back together. The glue is just a kind of theatrical pretending to be glue, in case anyone didn’t get it - this is not really a tree. The fresh green leaves are a funny bonus. It wasn’t like that when I put it together originally but it was shipped off obviously in the dark. When I opened the crate here it had opened its leaves, poor old thing. A tiny bit of life amongst these dead branches.

So it is a collage tree or what was the idea here?

Well, the reason I got the idea to make this piece, was when I made a tree for a museum show in Germany last year. It was a tree in space - I made this installation for the Mies van der Rohe building called Haus Lange in Krefeld. It was a very nice place to make a show and the tree was basically a real tree but it was cut off exactly were it reached the celing, so it seemed like it was growing through. That was actually really hard for me to do, but there were really good technicians. They cut the tree from the park and then they had to cut the tree in pieces to get in the door. Your eye is quite ok that’s a tree and then - what - that’s like the worst tree I ever saw. This one is just called Tree Repaired.
http://www.kopenhagen.dk/interviews/interviews/interviews_2010/interview_blaise_drummond/