Jalan Jati or "Teak Road' exhibition at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh traces the historic, material and poetic journeys of a 1950s teak bed that was found in a Singapore karang guni junk store, back to a location in Southeast Asia where the original teak tree may have grown.
Part magic, part science, part eco-historical investigation, the project is an interdisciplinary collaboration about memories of wood, trees and people.
The project comprises photography, woodprint collage and stop-motion animation. Jalan Jati connects cross-cultural natural histories, micro and macro arboreal influences and DNA timber tracking technology.
ARTWORKS:
The artworks in the exhibition include a new series of eleven 150cm x 200cm wood print collages, compiled of prints from the original teak bed by Lucy Davis and eight new large format photographs by Shannon Lee Castleman.
ANIMATED FILM:
The exhibition also features an international-award-winning experimental film by Davis, in collaboration with Singapore/UK composers and sound artists Zai Kuning and Zai Tang.
ART BOOK:
The exhibition opening will also be the launch of a 200-page art book on the Jalan Jati project, specially published for the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh with writing by Kevin Chua, Lucy Davis, Kate Kangaslahti and Lee Weng Choy.
Dates: 22 March - 7 July 2013
Jalan Jati (Teak Road): Winner, Promotional Award of the International Short Film Festival at Oberhausen, Germany 2012.
Jalan Jati (the project): Finalist, Prix COAL, Art & Ecology Prize, France 2011.
THE MIGRANT ECOLOGIES PROJECT was founded in 2010 as an umbrella for art practice‐led inquiries into questions of culture and nature in Southeast Asia: www.migrantecologies.orgRELATED EVENT:Forest to Junk: Tracing the Teak Road, Sunday 24 March - Find out moreImage: LUCY DAVIS (STOP MOTION), ZAI KUNING (COMPOSER): “How a Teak Bed Got Four Humans to Travel to Southeast Sulawesi and Back Again”. Raw Animation Stills. 2011.
A touring exhibition from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
The exhibition is part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival programme
