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New paintings on view at the Walter Grossmann Memorial Gallery in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMASS Boston as part of the exhibition Artists and the Archive.
My fellow Endpoint Collective members and I created work in response to the library’s archival material to examine climate issues. The exhibit is a component of the University’s Thinking About Climate Change: Art, Science, and Imagination in the 21st Century conference happening October 25 and 26. The show runs through January 17, 2025.
The wall label text:
Mark Roth’s Triptych suggests subtle shifts of emphasis can have outsized impact.Responding to photographs in the Thompson Island and Boston Urban Gardeners collections, the artist rearranges the file names of the archival material to present an alternate perspective – one that recognizes the agency of other-than-human entities: trees in this instance.
The photographs labeled “Man in front of a tree” and “Woman in front of tree” become the paintings Tree In Front of a Man and Tree in Front of Woman. The prioritization of the human in relation to the tree is reconsidered. The tree becomes subject, the actor of the story.
The source image for the central panel is a photograph identified as “Group gathers around fir tree.” It shows gardeners proudly posing with a newly planted tree. Fir Trees Gather Around Group depicts trees as reciprocating actors. Here the forest is an always present potentiality, a collaborative entity ready to give succor and sustenance in response to human efforts, even seemingly modest ones.
