FIELD NOTES
From a small olive grove in Ostuni, Italy, visual artist Don Fels and sound artist Rob Millis examine the extraordinary power of the monumental Pugliese olive trees to pull us back and forward in time. With photography, painting, drawing, ceramics, collage, writing and sound recording and composition, the artists consider the phenomenal vitality of these ancient organisms. Presented at the Castromediano Museum in Lecce, South Italy.
Having rooted on a thin layer of poor soil in an arid maritime zone, the trees have tapped down through the immense limestone shelf to find water and thrive. They have also found a long succession of human caretakers who over centuries have collaborated with them in remaining open to the light. In the process, they’ve taken on incredible and striking sculptural form, reflecting the human-natural partnership in ways that are uniquely compelling and astoundingly beautiful. FieldNotesis a paean to Puglia’s ancient olive trees which stand as monuments in the landscape signaling their profound relationship to the place, and the culture of which they are beacons.
In Field Notes, the artist book/catalog from Edizioni Esperidi, the artists muse about the wasting disease Xylella, and the conditions that likely led to its devastating presence in the Salento. The photographs in the exhibition follow the practice of grafting, which since ancient times has been used to improve the lot of the indigenous Pugliese olive trees. However sparingly, grafting is one of several options being used again in Puglia to help the trees defend against the disease.
Fels and Millis view the artistic interventions presented in the exhibition, as metaphoric grafting, wherein they’ve taken the fruits of their research in the olive grove and have collaged, applied, and reapplied their impressions onto new artworks. Their decidedly multi-media approach is in direct response to the monocultural farming in recent times of Salento’s olive trees. All the work on view at the Museo Castromediano was created specifically for the exhibition.
Robert Millis 