Christmas trees on Sandymount Beech

bobbyjoe

Anyone see all the trees on the beach.
Is that how they get rid of them or was someone having a laugh last night!!!

county

wtf:eek:

whiskeyman

LOL!!

This has to be someone having a laugh, or someones attempt at "modern art"?
Surprised this hasnt made the news yet... type of story the Herald might splash on! "Trees stranded"

robz150

It was on RTE News last night wasn't really listening, attempt at modern Art some people going on about the amazing reflections? I think theres a recycling place across the road and there moved over at some stage

N_Raid

It was on the news this morning on FM104. I wasn't really listening but as far as i remember it was the idea of some art student and the used trees were all donated to the project and are gonna be recycled when they're finished.

Tobias Greeshman

Was something on the ray d'arcy show this morning about it, wasn't really listening.

Think this explains it pretty well: http://www.stunned.org/weblog/

Freelancer

Some friends of mine were involved, they got invited down to plant some trees and have tea and buns Sunday morning. It looked interesting.

joejoem

silas wrote:

Was something on the ray d'arcy show this morning about it, wasn't really listening.

Think this explains it pretty well: http://www.stunned.org/weblog/

Ahh that ruins it. I remember when I was a kiddy, some knackers took a bus stop and put it on Sandycove beach, the concrete at the bottom aswell. The tide would come in and all you would see is the top

towger

What happens when they all get washed out to sea by the tide ..... and get snarled up in ships' propellors ? :rolleyes:

bobbyjoe

Will look cool when the tide comes in.
Anyone know what time it happens?

europerson

I think the installation, albeit temporary, is a great way to re-use unwanted Christmas trees. It looks cool.

Lump

Modern art = ****.

Here endeth the lesson.

John

LovelyHurling

You may knock it but the photos are great, very surreal. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than other examples of modern art in this city.
Well done to all involved, it reminds me of Christmas leaving us, all of those green christmas trees running to the sea after the 6th of January. Classic, very good idea

bobbyjoe

Looks like high tide is 19.45.

http://easytide.ukho.gov.uk/easytide/EasyTide/ShowPrediction.aspx?PortID=0615&PredictionLength=7

Lux23

Artists find new use for discarded Christmas trees
John Downes



It was perhaps the most unusual sight in Dublin yesterday - hundreds of Christmas trees planted on Sandymount Strand. Many motorists driving along the seafront stopped to stare and to ask what was happening.

The "forest on the beach" art installation was organised by Barbara Nealon (26) and Tara Kennedy (22), both recent art school graduates.

They had earlier leafleted houses in the area asking people to bring their Christmas trees to the seafront or to allow them to be collected from their houses. Those who brought their trees were shown where to plant them in the sand.

About 60 trees were collected from houses in the locality and the remainder came from the nearby Dublin City Council Christmas tree collection centre in a car park on Strand Road.

Ms Nealon said the plan was to allow the tide to come in and surround the trees on the beach. She estimated that with the help of 30 volunteers, up to 400 trees would be planted during the course of yesterday.

The proceedings were filmed with a view to making a short film.

"We're creating a forest here on the beach," she said. "It's an experiential thing . . . It's been wonderful to see people's reactions as they walk along. It's a really uplifting thing as well."

A spokesman for Dublin City Council said it had approved the "Transplant" exhibition, once certain conditions were met.

Council officials were present to oversee the installation of the trees yesterday. They are due to be removed later today.

Dave!

Lump wrote:

Modern art = ****.

Here endeth the lesson.

John

true that

Freelancer

bobbyjoe wrote:

Looks like high tide is 19.45.

http://easytide.ukho.gov.uk/easytide/EasyTide/ShowPrediction.aspx?PortID=0615&PredictionLength=7

Seeing as they went up on Sunday Morning, they've already survived one high tide so the suggestion that it'll clog ships propellers etc is moot, also, catch yourself on, ships propellers have to deal with sea weed and kelp a far more stringy and water resistant plant life, I imagine those fir trees, if they went in the water, would become water logged, and would be no real inconvenience for even a small boat's propeller.

As for "modern art=crap" At what point does modern art start to become old art and therefore crap. Is Picasso's Guerinca "crap"? Van Gogh's sun flowers? All art was modern art at the time it was created. Personally I like these interactions and reclaiming of our city spaces. While I'm not saying this piece is rivally some of bansky's incredibly clever and well thought out pieces, it certainly provoked thought and debate and put a smile on the face of the odd commuter today, and how is that crap?

Setun

"Modern art = ****.

Here endeth the lesson.

John"

All modern art?

alleepally

What a load of w*nk tbh.

LovelyHurling

Ignore the philistines, swim, christmas trees! swim for dear life!

fly_agaric

Freelancer wrote:

As for "modern art=crap" At what point does modern art start to become old art and therefore crap. Is Picasso's Guerinca "crap"? Van Gogh's sun flowers? All art was modern art at the time it was created.

Nothing to do with age. Art that is almost all concept (even a very good concept) and close to 0% skill is pretty crap. Like a cheap meat pie with mostly air and gravy. Of course, that's probably not a good analogy because "art" that is all skill and no concept is also pretty crap.

LovelyHurling

The only skill or concept required in the creation of art is in the eye of the beholder. Have you ever read Black Rook in Rainy Weather, that's nature creating an artpiece that inspired Plath. Art is a very vague term, but it doesn't have to be man made. I could smash up an urn with a hurley and you could see the remains as a mega statement, others would just see a disgrace. Same with the Christmas trees.

fly_agaric

^^No, I've never read it. I presume it is a poem. She had to have the idea for the poem (the concept, inspired by nature) - then she had to arrange the words to achieve that (the skill). Is this not so for all art (even if people disagree about good and bad)?

it doesn't have to be man-made

The only skill or concept required in the creation of art is in the eye of the beholder.

Do the beautiful things in nature really become art just because we observe them? Can art be created if there is no self-awareness at all?

I'm dragging this off topic. Sorry - I'll stop.:)

LovelyHurling

fly_agaric wrote:

No, I've never read it. I presume it is a poem. She had to have the idea for the poem (the concept, inspired by nature) - then she had to arrange the words to achieve that (the skill). Is this not so for all art (even if people disagree about good and bad)?

Yeah we're agreed on that, but the poem is about how art seeps out through ordinary landscapes, setting a scene on fire as Plath said. That feeling of fire and passion doesn't only have to jump out at us from a museum, it can happen equally so from a manmade creation like at Sandymount, or from a peculiar sort of cloud formation, etc. Nature photographers, for example, are only conserving in time an artwork that appears in the landscape. Art is natural, we perceive it but nobody can make it. Well, imo anyway:D

Although picasso intended Guernico to be about war, the real art for an individual in that picture doesnt have to be about any war, it could be about the state of your brain approaching an exam, etc. Anybody or anything can create art, it's how well that piece works in the mind of the beholders that matters.

fly_agaric

I now see we are defining "art" in totally different ways here. Under your definition (I think) the beauty of nature causes "art" to happen in the observers head. Forgive me for being a thicko. BTW, thanks for mentioning that poem.

Freelancer

fly_agaric wrote:

Nothing to do with age. Art that is almost all concept (even a very good concept) and close to 0% skill is pretty crap. Like a cheap meat pie with mostly air and gravy. Of course, that's probably not a good analogy because "art" that is all skill and no concept is also pretty crap.

Okay we're wandering towards serious debate and I think there are rules aganist that in AH. Most art like most books, and most paintings, and most music is well crap.

Modern is in general conceptual, which means it's essentially its based upon on idea. Most idea are crap. However does that mean all modern is crap, because all modern idea's are crap. Consider the sun exhibit in the main hall in the turbine room in tate modern. This was a piece that evoked massive public reaction and excitement.

I may be slightly excited cause I was given a book by Banksy for chrimbo, but the idea of art not bound to a frame or a statute, random unexplained art reclaiming public spaces, causing a double take among commuters, just raising an eyebrow, who announced that art to be art needs to framed and mounted in a museum, excites me. Why shouldn't art be out there, for us, odd and surreal, random acts of beauty? Whats not to like about a several dozen christmas trees on the beach. Esp considering they've made a pleasant and fun stop motion film about the planting of the trees?

It may not be profound and brilliant but keep thinking of the thousands of medicore prints in your friends and faimlies houses, bland medicore thoughtless saleable oil paintings of french farm houses, and critising someone for sticking up a bunch of christmas trees, as being "crap" and not art, exposing only your tolerance for "traditonal" art and reactionary contempt of "possible" art which is"modern" art.

I can feel this thread whistling over the head of the average AH poster.

Cianos

Ha..I know the two girls who did this

People get too caught up in what art "is" and "is not". The fact is that "art" is just a very loose word used to describe things that people dont really know much about - whether they like to think they do or not!

If we could just simplify the word art into, say, "beauty (whether positive or negative)", then maybe the argument may be a lot easier to discuss.

So, rather than saying is the beach piece "art", can we say is it a type of beauty? Because put very plainly, the artist is trying to express in their creation a vision of some sort of beauty (again, simplifying everything for the sake of simplicity!)

And so, do you think it is beautiful, or do you not? And then if you can answer that honestly then theres no need to go into the whole modern art discussion maybe.

LovelyHurling

Yeah deffo agree with you on that point. People sometimes worry whether a pice is artistically viable or not, but simply asking yourself is it beautiful is a nicer way of posing what is essentially the same question... I think that's because 'beauty' and all it encompasses - mystery, suspicion, warmth, fun, sadness, etc - is what all art is about anyway. All art is about evoking a response, and these Christmas trees do that very well.

I think modern art really liberates art itself and ironically, given most people's opinion of it, makes it more accessible to the general public, or at least it has the potential to do so. Would have loved to have been a commuter passing that this morning and, what a buzz

jay-me

This is the first I've heard of it.

fly_agaric

Freelancer wrote:

Why shouldn't art be out there, for us, odd and surreal, random acts of beauty? Whats not to like about a several dozen christmas trees on the beach. Esp considering they've made a pleasant and fun stop motion film about the planting of the trees?

I don't actually dislike the Christmas trees. It was a nice, clever idea and I'm sure it caused more than a few double-takes among those who happened to come upon it unawares. I suppose I had a fixed concept in my head about what "art" is, maybe caused by ignorance. LovelyHurling has suggested another way of looking at it (the response of the observer - "Is it beautiful?") - and the beach Christmas tree plant (how people reacted to it/will react to the film) is indeed art if you define things this way.

Freelancer wrote:

It may not be profound and brilliant but keep thinking of the thousands of medicore prints in your friends and faimlies houses, bland medicore thoughtless saleable oil paintings of french farm houses, and critising someone for sticking up a bunch of christmas trees, as being "crap" and not art, exposing only your tolerance for "traditonal" art and reactionary contempt of "possible" art which is"modern" art.

Very true. No concept and minimal skill (not saying I can do any better now:)), so they are perhaps worse than the Christmas trees in my previous way of thinking about what "art" is.

Freelancer wrote:

I can feel this thread whistling over the head of the average AH poster.

All that stuff about getting art out there for us (the people) and then you spoil it with an elitist comment about the posters in After Hours! /jk:D