Smoke Rises Among Exotic Trees (2022)

In 2019, Sioned Jones was charged with criminal damage to state-owned sitka spruce forestry plantation in West Cork, Ireland. For almost twenty years, she had been quietly and obsessively removing the non-native spruce trees and replacing them with native-Irish trees.

Smoke Rises Among Exotic Trees follows Sioned as she continues her obsessive re-forming of the landscape in the face of criminal charges. It may be too simple to say that her actions are motivated by environmental concerns; perhaps she is simply determined to alter the environment around her. Her story asks questions about the definitions of criminality and justice as they are applied to the cultivated landscape and reveals opposing systems of attributing value to nature.

The title of this work is derived from a description of a dream sequence in Peter Schneider’s book, The Wall Jumper.

Tulca Festival of Visual Arts 2022