Trees – their outer garment

Art review — Words by Chandra

Outer garment 1

It’s easy to overlook the bark of a tree – especially here in Auroville, where trees are everywhere and we pass them daily, often without stopping to truly see. But Trees – Their Outer Garment, a quiet and thoughtful exhibition by Tim at Pitanga, invites just that: a slowing down, a re-seeing.

The photographs – drawn from trees in India as well as a few from Europe and Asia – reveal a surprisingly wide emotional and visual range. Some images show bark as richly textured and expressive, like the brushstrokes of abstract art. Others evoke aerial views of landscapes – dry riverbeds, red canyons, patchwork fields. There’s something startling in how often the bark appears like a terrain, a body, or a dream.

The exhibition’s title refers to the bark as a tree’s “outer garment,” and Tim’s accompanying statement encourages viewers to rethink this familiar layer: “You may wonder what is special about the exterior of trees? Well, take a look at this exhibition, which presents an interesting range of photos, from the surface appearance of living trees to dead ones, smooth tree trunks to rough ones, and single coloured trunks to multi-coloured ones.”

Some images feel almost intimate – knots that resemble eyes, splits in the bark that suggest wounds or windows into the inner life of the tree. A few even seem to hold something hidden, something playful or mysterious. As Tim notes, the bark sometimes “captures… human and animal forms, including Ganesh!”

The sense that trees are beings in their own right runs through the exhibition – not in an overt or sentimental way, but in the stillness of each frame. The photographs seem to be listening, just as much as they are showing. They reflect a kind of gentle attention, both from the trees and from the artist who spent time with them.

In the end, it’s not just an exhibition about bark. It’s about relationship – between trees and the earth, between trees and each other, and between trees and us. As Tim gently encourages, “Trees can communicate with us!… with quiet sincerity and patience one can generally be successful.” The same might be said of the photographs themselves.

You just have to slow down .... And listen.

Tim’s love of the abstract

“I began photographing tree bark almost ten years ago, when I noticed a really unusual pattern in the bark of a tree. Over the years, I photographed more and more of them with my mobile phone until I had a collection of about eighty. I selected thirty-five photos for the exhibition, most of which were taken in Auroville.

What is fascinating about the bark of trees is that the form of each one is unique: there is only one like it in the whole world. Actually, it is not only bark that interests me, it is practically everything to do with the world of art. My parents had a large collection of early 20th century works of art so I became aware of art at a young age. I’m not an artist myself but I learned to appreciate creativity in others.

Much later I went to the Tate Gallery in London and saw a mobile sculpture by Alexander Calder. I was fascinated, absolutely fascinated. The thing about the mobile is that it takes no shape and yet it is every shape, there’s no fixed form but it is constantly creating new compositions as its component parts are moved by the wind. I think that was the beginning of my love of the abstract, of unusual shapes that are not any recognisable form, which I find in tree bark but also in other things. For example, some years ago a French photographer had an exhibition in Auroville. She had gone to Kerala and taken close-up shots of flaking paint on an old wall which was creating abstract formations. I love that kind of thing. In fact, I have two of her photographs in my bedroom.

So I am happy to present these photos of tree bark, which I want to emphasise are not my own works of art but rather the art of Mother Nature at her most interesting. Normally we just glance at trees but if we really look at them we can become inspired. If you focus on the details of nature, like even a small piece of bark, you will see how wonderful it is.

So my hope is that this exhibition will help people wake up to the incredible world that we live in.”