The journey of urban to nature to ‘Urban Nature
Thinking of the brief ‘Journey, its hard to not think about a physical journey whether it be a memorable journey or a new one you plan to pursue. Living in the central area of Birmingham I often visit the city centre on a regular basis or use it as the link to other locations. I rarely visit the country side and only come across nature when it is combined within urba¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬n living. Such things include roadside trees, flowers, water fountains and parks I pass and take for granted every day. This led me to feel how the two landscapes are often combined in more ways than we realise. I feel due to the construction and development designed to create nature without following nature’s wilderness path of decay and renewal there is little true nature in my life today. This type of ‘nature’ has replaced the original wildlife though deforestation which has been dramatically increasing over time. Artist Naoko describes parks as ‘’Fake Nature’’ and replicates that idea and thoughts into her work today.
Naoko Ito is a working Japanese artist born in Tokyo 1977. Currently working New York today she was a previous student at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Musashino Art University in Tokyo, Japan. She has been in numerous group exhibitions and has had her first solo exhibition on the topic ‘Urban Nature’. This series consists of many pieces of work and looks at the links between the natural and urban world and the relationship between them in modern society today.
One of her work within her series is named ‘Ubiquitous’. This composition shows segmented tree branches reconstructed to its original shape contained and preserved within glass jars. In some large jars there are often multiple small jars to get the shape the of tree branch specifically back into its original form as actually as possible. These jars are positioned carelessly around the concrete set creating a sense of tension in the work when the two...