Part of a wider project to make explicit the value of urban trees as part of the essential natural life support system that sustains us, [Re]Cycling Tree shows the atoms involved in photosynthesis and the breakdown of nitrous oxide gasses – Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon and Nitrogen – in their correct proportions to that process.
First shown in All Saints Park, Manchester in 2017 and linked to the City of Trees campaign, the installation was accompanied by prints and artists’ books made in association with the project, which was inspired by the careless destruction of over 120 mature trees along Manchester’s Oxford Road Corridor. Subsequently it has been shown in Kells Gardens in the West of Ireland over the summer of 2019 and in the conservatory of Manchester Museum where it was on display as part of the artist’s Oxford Road Murders exhibition on the value of urban trees. It was shown at Gallery No. 32 in Bexley, south London as part of their outdoor show ‘Winter Wonderland’ in 2021.
Since May 2022 it has been on display at the sculpure park at Slash Arts Boat Gallery alongside the western portal of the Islington Tunnel on the Regents Canal near Kings Cross.
My hope it to develop and re-make the work in the future so that an avenue or copse is surrounded by the sculpture, which I also hope could be able to be installed permanently in a suitable setting. In 2024 I made a second verion of [Re]Cycling Tree which was displayed on Lindow Moss, Cheshire from June 2024 to June 2025. It is planned to show the work in Platt Fields Market Garden close to the artist’s home in Rusholme, Manchester.
