Pine’s Eye explores what it means to be human in times of ecological change. Taking its name from 'Pinocchio' (the Italian for ‘pine eye’ or ‘kernel’) it is necessarily tricky and mischievous as it weaves a journey between subjectivities entangled in the natural world. Rejecting progress, purity, standardisation and originality it: creates new forms of ritual, reframes modernism as a pagan pursuit, asks flowers to bear witness to global treaties, observes the hybrid human and botanical cultures of enchanted islands, introduces inexplicable phenomenon into representations of early modern history, cultivates the weeds of European cities as a form of resistance, imagines alternatives to colonialism and introduces indigenous tales of the forest.
Through masks, mannequins and magic, Pine’s Eye offers alternative perspectives for how we understand ourselves in the face of environmental crisis. Including contemporary artists from both indigenous groups and the international artworld it features.
French artist Laurent Grasso is concerned with the relationship between art and science. 'Studies into the Past' establishes a false historical memory by inserting mysterious phenomenon into Renaissance-style images, disrupting our sense of this Euro-centric history and asking us to find a sense of wonder and strangeness in this hybrid, protomodern period of knowledge acquisition.