Even to the End

The Wardian case is an early 19th century innovation that, for the first time in history, enabled live plant species to be transported successfully between continents. The cases were instrumental in changing the earths ecology. However, although the transportation of plants is potentially crucial for preserving endangered species they face multiple threats from the negative impact of deforestation, industrial scale agriculture and pollution. Our biospheres are in a constant battle against the erosion of a dynamic, balanced environment. In Even to the End plant specimens grow in impersonal looking glass cases which gently drift out to sea eventually landing on a fecund and variegated island. This scene gradually evolves into a forlorn and ravaged landscape. Burnt and devastated, the forest morphs into a barren landscape. The 9 minute long video spans a twenty-four hour period, commencing at dawn and finishing as night falls with a glimmer of hope on the horizon which reveals itself to be the Wardian cases appearing on the shoreline. This short film is a meditation on what the human race is capable of; magnificence and ingenuity in one instance and plunder and ruin in another. The narrative is cyclical, reflecting the Sisyphean task of maintaining the planets ecology. The films audio is Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Barber was inspired by Virgil's Georgics, a poem about agriculture husbandry, propagation and growth and how man's efforts to cultivate the land is perpetually threatened by destructive storms and violent fires.

Title

Year

Materials

Dimensions

Exhibitions