Untitled #2 (Bleeding Heart), 2023, woodcut on digital print, kozo paper
Untitled #3 (Bleeding Heart), 2023, woodcut on digital print, kozo paper
Untitled #4 (Bleeding Heart), 2023, woodcut on digital print, kozo paper
A Feeling of Skin, 2023, plaster cast of tree trunk, embossing, modified drum leaf binding
Bleeding Heart Story, 2023, frottage and screen print on kozo paper, scroll in book box, steel stand
These works begin to address the question of how might I begin to think with trees. They question how images frame the way we see trees by creating the image as a kind of screen through which we must peer in order to make sense of that which is seen. Simultaneously, they explore the material relationship between myself and the wood, as the carving became a negotiation between my body and that of the tree, both of which exert lively forces.Thus, at the moment of carving, I am reminded that, like a tree, I am also constantly created in and through my environment; I am of the world. In these relationships, which are an acknowledgement of our shared world, we find an ethical demand to care about others, and in particular, trees.
⁂
Brigitta Summers is an emerging artist and writer living and working on Gadigal and Wangal land in Sydney. Her research investigates ‘thinking with trees’ through artistic practice, primarily large-scale woodcut and site-based bookmaking as a way of transforming her relationship to the environment. Alongside, Brigitta has maintained a text and graphic based practice, in which she explores the aesthetic potential of language as form both visually and conceptually.