Tree Story at Monash University Museum of Art features Ceal Floyer's installation Overgrowth

19 February 2021

Featuring over 30 international artists, 'Tree Story' at Monash University's Museum of Arts outside of Melbourne, Australia, brings together creative practices from around the world to create a ‘forest’ of ideas relating to critical environmental and sustainability issues. At its foundation—or roots—are Indigenous ways of knowing and a recognition of trees as our ancestors and family. An exhibition, publication and podcast series, 'Tree Story' takes inspiration from the underground networks, information sharing and mutual support understood to exist within tree communities, and poses the question: what can we learn from trees and the importance of Country?

Ceal Floyer is celebrated for her deft manoeuvres in everyday situations, testing the slippage between function and implication, the literal and the imagined. In Overgrowth (2004), an image of a bonsai tree is projected onto a wall, the projector situated far enough away from the wall for the famously miniature bonsai to appear ‘tree-size’. Requiring a long, rectangular space in order to allow the necessary projection distance, sufficient space is also kept behind the projector to suggest the scale could be adjusted even further.

'Tree Story' is on view through 10 April 2021. Find further information via the Monash University Museum of Art.