Graduated from University of Wales Institute, Cardiff
Selected by Richard Higlett
Invasion - detail, 2006
Selector text
Alice Forward's work explores the uneasy psychological and social relationship between man and nature. It traverses the edges of their respective territories where flora and fauna exists despite mans expanding habitat. The latent potential for nature to reassert itself is explored in several works with an implied menace resonant of the writer John Wyndham.
While these themes are an echo of childhood anxieties they are not sentimental works but a distillation of concerns throughout her life as Forward negotiates the urban environment as an alien and dislocated experience.
In some works, Forward employs gold leaf as a loaded medium to elevate the objects and actions that we passively observe. In 2006, she created 'Pista de Oro', a gilded pavement in downtown Bogotá, Columbia, citing the cities historical relationship with gold. In works such as 'Between the Cracks' (2006) individual weeds in the pavement were coated in gold leaf. Inspired by the legend of El Dorado and the process of mummification, the plants being venerated were destroyed in the process.
In 'Weedwork (clematis vitalba)' (2007) and 'Weedwork (populus alba)' (2007) she creates highly accurate pencil drawings of weeds growing within the grounds of the art college. Referencing the study of 18th century botanists, the work questions our systems of classification and received knowledge.
For her degree presentation, Forward constructed a physical copy of her attic bedroom, inviting the viewer to spend time laying in her bed and reading her books. A soundtrack of passing traffic emanating from within the walls is punctuated by the melancholic squawking of the Jackdaws that share her actual the roof space. The Jackdaw holds a place in folklore as a messenger of death or impending doom. Separated by a partition wall as they sleep, this living situation is resonant of her practice. (Richard Higlett, 2007)
Artist statement
Both my colonial roots and a strong identification with plants are contributory factors in my fascination with the social, historical and psychological links between plants and humans. I have long been preoccupied with my own and the rest of humanity's schizophrenic relationship with nature - that wild 'out there' that seems impossibly alien and other despite our undeniable place within it. The processes of drawing, pressing, preserving, recording - the 'pinning down' of nature - are a common thread running through much of the work. The context in which it is made and shown is particularly important to me: 'Invasion' (2006), for instance, was an installation that involved native succulent plant cuttings making inroads into the interior fabric of a public library on the outskirts of Bogotà , Colombia. This was an elegant ivory tower space, a vast tropical wood and glass palace to civilisation, with a moat of clipped parkland keeping at bay the stench of its encircling shanty towns.
There were three works in total shown in the Cardiff MA degree show. For 'Weed, Gilded and Pressed (lactuca serriola)' (2007), a seven-foot member of the dandelion family was gold-leafed in situ (growing out of the drainage system of a private house) prior to being uprooted and pressed for three months in a giant 'flower press' (a ten-foot high construction of wooden batons and boards) in the art school studio where the piece was finally to be shown. 'Weedworks: Proposal' was a file of photocopies of a series of detailed botanical pencil drawings of collected surviving plants found growing, diseased and puny, in cracks and nooks around the university campus - specimens rendered rare by regular visitations within the institution by Weed-patrol. The plants had to be uprooted in order for their entirety to be drawn, a process which eventually killed them. The original drawings were held in safekeeping by the University Library for the duration of the show, viewable by appointment only. The file also contained an ongoing proposal, to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, for the drawings to be finally lodged in their Botanic Library. 'Room' (2007) is an invitation to viewers to share the experience of my attic bedroom, through a faithful life-size replica (complete with soundtrack), carefully dug out of the border between two college departments. The original bedroom is an illegal space that was burrowed out of a neighbour's roof by the previous occupant; it is one of those unofficial places in which weed-ness might proliferate - a space in which I can feel happily illicit; identifying with the family of Jackdaws, to whom, as they live just inches above my head in the disused chimney, I feel so close and yet so far.
Qualifications and training
- 2007 MA Fine Art, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, Wales
- 1979 BA (Hons) Fine Art, Hornsey School of Art (Middlesex University), London
