The Occasional Journal
The Dendromaniac
March 2015
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Editorial
Alice Tappenden, Ann Shelton, Jessica Hubbard -
For the trees
Rachel Buchanan -
dwelling trees, tree dwellings
Xin Cheng -
Axis Mundi: Long Live the Tree of Life
Prudence Gibson, Tessa Laird -
Forest satyagraha
Robyn Maree Pickens -
Garden City
Holly Best -
Accentuated Breath
Clare Hartley McLean -
On the portraiture of mushrooms
Creek Waddington -
Shade
Andrea Gardner -
bigwoods
Emil McAvoy -
Regan Gentry: Transformer and Master of Time
Sharon Taylor-Offord -
Colonisation versus conservation: a colonial view
Rebecca Rice -
Tae
Bridget Reweti -
The Framing of the Earth
Richard Shepherd -
Wildness in the Garden of Empire
Shaun Matthews -
In search of unknown vandals
Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, Thomasin Sleigh -
Bo.tan.i.cal: from the Greek
Jessica Hubbard -
The Tree as Traveller: Sakura in space, kōwhai in Chelsea, and the oldest pohutukawa in Spain
Emma Ng -
Seeing the wood and the trees: a complicating history of Hitler’s Oaks
Ann Shelton -
Conversations with Cripplewood
Cat Auburn -
Out of the Woods: The Return of Twin Peaks
Alice Tappenden, Matt Plummer -
The conceptual, the pastoral, and the plainly freakish (or, some of my favourite artworks are trees…)
Martin Patrick -
This is a femme slam.
Sian Torrington -
Explorations
Christian Nyampeta -
Works from the series An Ethnography on Gardening, 2006-2008
Raul Ortega Ayala -
Bent
Jonathan Kennett, Mary Macpherson -
One Shining Gum / Savia Brillante
Christina Barton, Maddie Leach, Zara Stanhope -
Acknowledgments
Alice Tappenden, Ann Shelton
Garden City
Holly Best
They suit a corner or make a line; construct fine barricades. They are wrestled with to conform, contorted or disfigured, planted because one needs to be naked in their bedroom. They are too leafy, they are not leafy enough.
They did what the shop tag said they would. Indoor/outdoor flow, block out the neighbours place. Easy care back up dancers with perimeter fence day jobs. Full sun / likes pots.
Trees are shelter and refuge; they reveal our desire for ownership, privacy, territory. They line the river for the postcards.
It is the Garden City. The city of many gardens—suburbs of gardens, gardens framing ghosts of cleared Christchurch homes. It is one big gardens—with lonely pastel explosions of hydrangea, cypress trees in a solemn brigade, gleeful weeds and wilds.
Sans haircuts, an unemployed cast of trees; trees in a huddle, slouching past the letterbox, marching down the driveway.
They work out their own order with abandon. Trees where they naturally belong are growing strong but are vulnerable to the city’s Plan—waiting to be bestowed with the plastic tape allowing them to stay.
All images © Holly Best
About the artist
Holly Best graduated with a BFA Honours (Photography) and a BA (English / Art History) from the University of Canterbury. Her work has been shown in several solo and group exhibitions. She is currently living and working in Christchurch.