The Tree and Car

Designed as artwork for a bus poster for the Art of Moving Exhibition, organised by ANU Art and Environment Studio. Digital print from medium format slide.

The car is rusted and landlocked on a sea of grass. Nature has re-purposed its engine bay to become a home for a tree whose beginning and growth cycle is intimately linked to the car’s decomposition. The tree is approx 50 years old and the beginning of its lifecycle marks the end of the cars functionality.

I happened upon this scene whilst on a road trip; it spoke to me of nature’s reclamation and re-purposing of the car body and comparative life cycles. The car once moved across the landscape at a great speed but as a technological device it’s life cycle is comparatively short when compared to the potential life cycle of a tree.  Where the car was once mobile it is now the tree that is mobile growing upwards out of its engine bay. That the tree is positioned and grows out of the car’s engine bay also speaks of the current societal imperative of moving beyond fossil fuels to find more sustainable modes of transport. The tree forms an important function in our landscape of turning carbon into oxygen. The image symbolises this triumph of ecological system and life cycle over technological system and life cycle; a triumph of carbon reducer over carbon producer.