Tracing Darwin’s Roots 

In January 2008, the Natural History Museum invited ten major artists to propose works for Darwin's Canopy - the ceiling of the museum's central hall, which was being renovated to commorate the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth - Darwin 200. 

The artists who submitted propsals included Mark Wallinger, Alison Turnbull, Rachel Whiteread and Richard Woods, but it was Tania Kovats' TREE that was selected - unanimously - by the judging panel.

Tom Bailey spoke to Tania Kovats for RSA Arts & Ecology.

The British artist Tania Kovats has a passion for landscape and geology. Having become the Henry Moore Drawing Fellow in 2004, she published The Drawing Book in 2005.

Since then her focus has shifted towards the working in the open. In 2006 she created the Museum of the White Horse, a landscape museum housed inside a converted horsebox, reinterpreting the archaeological landscape of Uffington. This miniature museum travelled all over the UK.

In 2007 her desire to create travelling works increased in ambition. For her work Meadow Kovats transported a complete wildflower meadow from Bath to London on a working canal boat, via the inland waterways of southern England. The following year, she had the opportunity to retrace some of Darwin’s epic journey around South America (recorded in his The Voyage of the Beagle), exploring the landscapes where the young naturalist first began to develop his evolutionary ideas.

TREE is a wafer-thin longitudinal section of an entire 200 year-old oak – including the roots, trunk and branches – inlaid into the ceiling of a mezzanine gallery behind the museum’s Central Hall, amongst the ornate gilded representations of plants already decorating the ceiling.

At more than 17 metres long, TREE will become the largest botany specimen on display at the museum and the only contemporary art work permanently installed in the Grade I listed building. Kovats’ work is a slice through a vast living organism, taken as if to be placed on a microscope slide. She says that TREE is inspired by Charles Darwin’s iconic tree of life diagram, a sketch representing his idea of evolution in his red transmutation notebook B.

The oak used for TREE  was felled from sustainable forests of the Longleat Estate, and it is due to be unveiled in London at the Natura History Museum on 19 March 2009.

A couple of weeks before the unveiling, she kindly took some time off from finishing TREE to speak to RSA Arts & Ecology about her work.

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Tania, thanks for giving your time for interview. First of all, congratulations on winning the Darwin’s Canopy competition. It must have taken a huge deal of thought and planning to come up with such an ambitious project. The work is due to open on 19 March. How are the final stages going – is it almost finished now?

Yes, it’s very nearly there, and the last parts of the project are being put into place. We always knew that the roots would be the last pieces in, because they would be the most difficult to manage (I think there’s a reason they stay in the ground). Once you unearth them, you don’t just take out the roots – there was also 22 tonnes of earth and stones that came out with it, all intermeshed into the roots. So it was a much bigger task than we’d anticipated, cleaning it all up and preparing it in order to be able to work with the wood. And the roots were much wetter than the rest of the wood as well. We’ve already had to accelerate the drying process for the oak, but the roots were holding a lot more water. The whole of TREE has now been prepared at the studio, and there is just the painting of the panels (holding the wood in place) to be completed.

Like your work Meadow, it must have been a very demanding process to actually organise the construction of TREE. Can you talk a little bit about how it was done, the challenges of putting it all together, and perhaps any major changes that the work underwent as you were creating it?

The first challenge was to find a tree from a source that we felt happy about. It also had to be a beautiful tree, a magnificent tree that would lend itself to drawing. So when I would come to trace the line from top to bottom, it would be something that was interesting or beautiful. Obviously many trees are beautiful, but I was doing something quite specific in taking this line down through the tree.

Then the tree was felled and chopped up, just as would be any tree that was being felled for timber. Every single piece that we were keeping had to be labelled and mapped, since instead of a tree we now had a massive stack of timber, these enormous pieces of wood that had to be put back together again. That was quite a difficult process, despite our careful mapping of it. It was still very complex to remake these pieces into a tree.

Then the next stage was about refining the material which we had. So from fairly thick slices of the tree – about one of two inches – we had to then take that down to about a 4 millimetre slice. Each stage had its own kind of challenge, such as drying the oak. Ideally, you’d have several years to dry oak of the size that we were working with.

Then the wood was routed down on a very large table router – we had to pare it down to get this very fine layer. And then we had to deal with the even finer layers such as the twigs and the smaller branches, and we had to have a different methodology to work with them. The root was a slightly separate case as well. So there was this constant reassembling, trying to get back almost to what the tree was at the beginning.

And what is it about oak that drew you to work with it? Will it bend like beams in old houses?

I hope not! I think the oak has a symbolic and cultural value – traditionally it is the king of the woods. With about 400 species of oak worldwide it is also very diverse, and so retains both a mythical status and a very real status within woodland. I also chose oak in connection with the room where it was to be exhibited – there’s an oak floor in there, the doors are made of oak, and there’s this lovely terracotta stonework. So there’s a sense of making my work belong in that room, because oak is already very present in there, it’s just in the form of something we’d normally think of, such as floorboards and doorframes. But now the oak is in its real form as a tree.

The oak is iconic in British culture, as they are in French, German and American cultures, and I think I did want TREE to have some of this emblematic quality. There’s also the fact that they grow to such a mature age as well – I wanted a tree that was as old as Darwin would be now, and not all trees can make that age.

Talking of Darwin, I was interested to hear that you’ve been on a tour of South America and retraced some of his steps, and also visited his famous Kent home, Down House. What is it in particular that interests or surprises you about the man himself and his ideas?

While I was travelling, he made a surprisingly fresh travel companion! I’d never been on an adventure like that before. Taking the text of The Voyage of the Beagle with me, there were points on the trip where there wasn’t another "way" into the landscape. I passed through less visited areas like the Pampas, or some of the passes over the Andes, which are not so typical destinations in the sense that the Tierra del Fuego is. At these points Darwin became a great voice in the landscape for me, with his ability to be able to visualise how a landscape was formed. Because of his geological brain he could read the passage of time in the landscape and describe its formation. He had this "big picture" way of looking at an environment, as well as noticing amazing little tiny details. This polarity of thinking was really attractive to me.

Partly his bravery as well! When he was travelling he was obviously quite an adventurous young man, and took on what must have been so shocking. He must have been in nature shock for years afterwards.

What surprises me is that much of the continent was almost in civil war. There was immense political unrest at the time, and he was pretty lucky…

Yes, I think that probably made quite a big impression on him as well, in addition to issues such as slavery and political inequality – to be in Argentina when effectively the indigenous people were being eradicated. That must have been so shocking. But then again, from what I can understand there was this network of ex-pats with colonial interest, and he seemed to stay with lots of nice people who would take him hunting and shooting.

The way he describes riding out with the gauchos [South American herdsmen] and getting his own gaucho outfit is fantastic. It must have been some sort of romantic fantasy he was living in as well. Obviously the voyage had a really profound impact on him, but then again he came back to England and never left the country. I think that’s quite interesting too. He went on this enormous adventure, then came back and tried living in the city, but he didn’t really want society life in that form. He then made quite a retreat to Down House. The house became his world and his laboratory – that’s certainly the atmosphere of it. And he lived this life of constant correspondence by post, but all from this tiny little corner. With all that he’d seen on his travels, there was now enough for him to observe just in his garden. I find that really interesting. And just how brave he was to publish his ideas, fully knowing some of the impact that they were going to have.

Now you mention his ideas, what do you think might be the challenges of interpreting Darwin’s theories, or, more broadly, interpreting scientific ideas through art?

I don’t have a scientific background, but I think I am drawn to those moments in the history of science where those imaginative leaps take place. I’m also interested in the craft of science, the way that scientists prepare experiments, act them out, record them, the drawings and notebooks they use. The thought trails that they make I find really interesting. But I find it quite hard to engage with current cutting-edge science – I quite often need someone to interpret it! But I think all the interest in Darwin this year is fantastic. It does show that people are really engaging with the journey on which he set us off – the start of evolutionary biology, towards the study of genes and inheritance. But Darwin was also quite a way ahead of his time. He didn’t have a community of scientists engaged in exactly the same area that he was.

It is fascinating, 200 years on, to look back at what he started, and how a whole new science develops through a particular chain of thought. There have of course been points since he published his ideas when his theories have been a bit sidelined. From what I understand, it wasn’t until the advances were made in geological knowledge – the fossil record, land bridges connecting land masses, and the later discovery of plate tectonics – that Darwin’s theory got proved in a whole different way. It’s interesting how someone’s thinking becomes more or less important depending on the concerns of that particular time.

It’s interesting that you bring up the evolution of the theory of evolution. What interests me is that Darwin’s sketch itself is a small piece of art itself, amidst a sea of scientific notes. One of the strengths of the theory of evolution is that it’s often been called a "creative" process itself that is built into the natural world. This idea has appeared, in different ways, in several evolutionary theorists from Henri Bergson to Richard Dawkins. Do you feel that, in using organic materials for your work, you are developing materials that are, in a sense, already natural works of art?

How you define beauty is a whole other conversation. But I do feel that I am borrowing from works that we have designated beautiful already. Most people would acknowledge that a tree has value for all sorts of reasons, but what I am doing with TREE is opening it up and revealing an inner world of this oak. We’ve all seen wood grains, but to actually see the grain throughout the whole growth of the tree is not something you’d normally be able to do, to see how the wood grain represents time and growth within the tree. There is a whole other form that TREE opens up. It’s using something that already exists, a real thing. The Natural History Museum is full of real biological specimens from around the world, and I wanted to put another real thing into the collection, revealing it in a way that I thought was extremely beautiful, that told a whole story of the tree.

On the idea of evolutionary theory as a creative thing (that through evolution new forms are constantly being created), "creative" is a very loaded word, because we get into areas of "creation myths". Even talking about creativity in art, it’s always quite a difficult word to use. I totally see why you asked that question, but I’m a little bit wary of employing the word.  

What, if any, other artistic interpretations of evolutionary theory, or natural history, have influenced your work?

The I think drawing is definitely a drawing that I’ve been compelled by for quite a long time, partly because of how amazingly well it describes a moment of conception. It’s like the idea is happening in front of you when you look at that drawing. In drawing there’s an exchange between thought and the mark that you make, the drawing becomes a trace of that moment. So I think that drawing is so exciting, partly because it’s also very simple. The thing that compels me about Darwin’s evolutionary theory is that you have a really simple answer to a very big, complex question. A lot of the artworks that I feel are strongest (and I strive to do this in my own work) are incredibly simple in essence, but may have many complex readings that can be projected onto them. A dumb art work is one that you can usually talk about the longest. An artwork that has something very simple at its core then lends itself to constant reflection, and lots of layering can go on.

What fascinates me with some your work is the connection with museums – I am thinking specifically of your Museum of the White Horse. I understand that this is not the first time your work has been exhibited at the Natural History Museum. What it is that draws you to these archival structures, or – in the case of TREE and Museum of the White Horse – to create living archives?

I think I’ve been interested in cultural containers for art as soon as I’d worked out what art was. Art is partly defined by the architectural sites that it happens in. The Natural History Museum is some kind of endless system for classifying the natural world. The natural world somehow just is – it happens in this massive chaotic, symbiotic relationship with itself. And yet a building like that, and what it represents in relation to science and taxonomy, shows the very elaborate attempt that we make to classify everything, give everything a label. I find this impulse quite interesting – what need does it answer in us, to impose those systems of order on the chaotic mass of "stuff". I suppose that’s what something like the natural history museum tends to represent for me. And then as well of getting the sense of a "survey of all things", you can also have an experience with the real thing. You might wander round the museum for hours, from room to room, not really focussed on what you’re looking at, but then suddenly you see one thing – and this is like a kind of meeting. For me this is something like the massive meteor up in the rock and crystals room. We normally couldn’t touch anything so far away in space and time, and yet there it is, sitting in front of you. Museums are potential sites for these meetings with "the real thing from somewhere else". This is slightly different from collections of art works.

I suppose this half answers my next question. The Natural History Museum is of course full of either preserved or reconstructed natural artefacts. I am intrigued by the fact that your work, in becoming permanent within the building, blurs the boundary between what is art and what is an exhibited artefact. It is as if your work becomes one of the artefacts. Do you feel that there is there any sense in which the Natural History Museum is a kind of art gallery itself?

That comes down to interpretation. There is a huge amount of crafting and a huge amount of drama, and a few dark corners – a kind of melodrama – to how the curators present objects. The way that the specimens are presented can be absolutely exquisite, and is at times very artful. But its not the same as saying that something is an art work – that comes down to intention. There are "unauthored" things, and then there is often the anonymous taxidermist. It’s very rare if you get a sense of who’s made these collections or prepared these specimens. But they certainly do have a great aesthetic value, a great sculptural value, and there certainly are moments when the distinctions between art and artefact don’t seem so relevant.

The Natural History Museum hasn’t ever commissioned an artist to make a permanent work. Even with the magnificent gilded ceiling, which is beautiful Victorian decorative art, it’s not really known who painted them. The names of the decorative companies are known, but it was not like an artist was commissioned to do it. So TREE probably will sit in a slightly in-between status as a work.

In terms of the visitor to the museum, I don’t know how important it is to me that they make that distinction. I’ve made several large works without the gallery context, the protection of the white cube, and I’ve had to accept that not everyone would see my work as art because of that. Those works didn’t have that cultural definition of the gallery. Maybe after TREE has been unveiled I’ll know if people think of it as an art work or just another thing in the museum. I know what I think about the work, but I can’t gauge what will happen to it over time.  

You’ve worked a lot with landscapes and, particularly with Meadow, moving landscape. This work reminded me of one of Darwin’s observations in The Voyage of the Beagle, where (I think it was on a mountain in Chile) he sees some real floating islands of bush-like plants. However, for all of Darwin’s voyaging, and for all the movement in Meadow and the Museum of the White Horse, TREE (once finished) is to be a stationary work. Do you think you prefer art to be on the move?

I thought a lot about time when making TREE, partly because the last two project I made had this very intense temporal quality to them. They were moving, transient, nomadic art works. In this piece the time element is within the work, because the wood grain is time. There have been all sorts of interesting connections with timelines because the tree is 200 years old, it is a commemorative work, and it is also a permanent commission which will remain there into the future. So I’ve had to measure my presence in this as a very short moment within the presence of the tree’s life and the life of the work. Time has certainly been part of my thought process on this; I’m very excited that it’s a permanent work. I don’t think that all my work should be transient at all, I’m happy to make work in a gallery context as well. But I have also had some privileged experiences of working with landscape in the landscape. I like the idea of expanding what my practice is – I’ve spent a lot of time working outdoors, but I do work inside too!

Darwinian ideas have perhaps taken on a new importance in the current context of severe climatic change. Many scientists are concerned about the limit of adaptation, the fact that species won’t be able to evolve quickly enough to survive within fluctuating environmental conditions. Trees, in particular, will not be able to migrate speedily enough to new, habitable regions. Did contemporary environmental concerns impinge upon the making of TREE in any way?

I saw the work to be much more about endurance of the tree rather than the fragility of it. When you talk to a palaeontologist or a geologist about time or the future of the planet, there’s a similar kind of "crashing in" of the timeline – our presence here, in the timeline of the planet, is actually going to be quite short. And because of the way we’re living, we seem sort of hell-bent on bringing that era to a close! It’s not that I don’t think about these things, but I also feel that every culture creates its own kind of catastrophe myth, just as it makes its own creation story. I see that as a kind of anthropological need, and our current catastrophe myth is fairly compelling and fairly believable. But I don’t know how accurately we can predict anything; I don’t have a sense of certainty about what’s next. I don’t think you can preserve ‘now’ and I don’t think you can predict what’s next. I’ve accepted uncertainty to an extent, but there’s a lot that I think we could do to improve our chances as the climate changes. I think we’ve got to start thinking about the idea of extinction as a distinct possibility, and start acting on that.

Do you have any more forthcoming works relating to Darwin?

Once TREE is finished I’m going to be something at the Courtauld Institute during the summer – a conference about Darwin and the arts. Then I’m showing something at BALTIC in another Darwin-related exhibition called A Duck for Mr. Darwin. That’s happening from 10 April to 20 September, and I’m exhibiting along with other artists. Then I’m going to be making some drawings related to Darwin, which I’ll show at the end of the year in Edinburgh. The idea of actually doing some work on paper at the moment sounds very attractive! I think some of the events coming up in relation to Darwin are going to be less about commemorative and reflective content, but more about Darwin in relation to the future, and his impact on things like environmental thinking. I think we’re probably ready for that. There’s been a lot of commemorative acknowledgement, and its time to start turning his lens onto now and onto the future.

Lastly, just two quick questions we’re trying to ask every artist we speak to. Can you think of a single piece of work that has changed your position on any issue?

Well, if it’s issue-based, thinking about political consciousness or something like that, it would probably be Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum document. That was certainly an issue-based piece of work that changed my opinion. But that’s not in any way related to Darwin or what I’m doing. Maybe I’ve touched on this before, but I don’t start with the issue when creating an artwork; the artwork might bring up issues, but I don’t put the issue at the centre of the work.

Raymond Williams wrote, “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.” Is there anything in particular that you are hopeful about at the moment?

I’m a pathological optimist – it’s very annoying for people who know me. What else am I hopeful about… my vegetable patch…? I am quite hopeful about the planet. I think we might be much less relevant to its success than we think we are, even if we seem to be trying quite hard to destroy it. That is something I am generally hopeful about – I think that the planet will right itself despite us.

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Tom Bailey is a freelance environmental and arts writer, living in London. Besides writing regularly for Conservation Today (www.conservationtoday.org), he also works for BASH Creations, London's first eco-entertainment company, and is a press officer for Botanical Gardens Conservation International. He is particularly interested in interpretations of evolutionary theory and the events taking place during Darwin 200.

All photographs © Natural History Museum

Slideshow at top of page: The finished artwork TREE by Tania Kovats, which is opened to the public on 19 March 2009.

Photos in copy:  Tania Kovats preparing the ground to plant an oak sapling in January 2008, one of 200 which will be planted at the Longleat estate as part of TREE; Darwin's notebook containing the I Think illustration. 

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