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Project:

The installation comprised of a charming mix of natural materials (a room packed with real trees), 1000's of artificial flowers, a computer animation and video work - all looking at representations of a forest. The theme of simulation was continued in a piece facing onto the street showing a 'virtual' walk through the actual installation (this was 1995). As if this layering wasn't enough (we did say it was over ambitious/complex) we perfumed the gallery with the stench of articficial 'forest' and played a sound track.

"The installation was designed to exploit two adjoining spaces as 'stages' - both in the theatrical sense and in the sense of a journey, evoking a sense of highly condensed narrative familiar from theme parks.
On entering the gallery the first room was densely packed with evergreen trees set into yellow gravel, through which the viewer walked down a narrow path, the trees sloping up to the ceiling on either side of them. The low light and height of the trees created a dense atmosphere.
The artifice of this 'enchanted forest' ended abruptly on entering the second space, where the visitor emerged into a bright space over looking the street. The floor was submerged beneath artificial flowers, and the viewer had to walk over these to view a computer animation and, opposite, a television showing a video. Both these sequences shared the imagery of the first space, but questioned its 'authenticity' in their formats and content. The computer animation was highly stylised, generated within a 3D programme, whereas the video footage was filmed in an actual forest (in which the trees in the first room were felled), creating a dual tension both between these two versions of 'on-screen' reality, and in their relationship to the first space's 'artificial' reality."

Pope & Guthrie 1995