Catalogue essay for Charlie Hillhouse: Untitled (Roadside Trees), innerspace contemporary art, Brisbane, 13 February 2020.
Growing up my street was dotted with poinciana trees planted into the road with thick black bitumen poured right up to their trunks. The larger trees had chunks pruned from their foliage to avoid them tangling with the powerlines and causing blackouts during storms. Over the years the roots slowly lifted and cracked the road around them, exposing the path of their root system. A watchful driver would know to slow down or swerve to avoid the lumps that they created in the road’s surface. Despite the damage caused to the road and the soggy mush of red and green on car bonnets, the trees gave our street some character. The local council continues to plant young poinciana in neatly cut square holes in the road, surrounded by wire cages.
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In the series Untitled (Roadside Trees) Charlie Hillhouse photographs trees he comes across in the inner suburbs of Brisbane. Using a snapshot documentary style, he creates portraits of these often overlooked characters, drawing attention to their charm and stoic presence in our daily lives. Charlie often focuses in on features of the urban environment in his work including expressways, barbed wire, satellite dishes, and cliffs created through urban development, all through a considered and patient lens rarely afforded by the average passer-by. In documenting these forms methodically he imbues them with a certain reverence, appreciating their eccentricities with care and attention.
The familiar approach to urban landscaping seen in Untitled (Roadside Trees) makes obvious an underlying friction between the natural world and built environment, and our often clumsy attempts to mediate the two. While there are no figures present in the photographs, the impact of human behaviour and attitudes towards the natural world are visible. There is a sense that many of these trees were planted to provide a service to us. When the trees outgrow their tiny plot, brush the underbelly of an expressway, and begin pushing over fences, they demonstrate an agency that resists against our attempts to structure human environments.
Throughout his practice, which spans film, photography, posters, and artist books, Charlie draws attention to the beauty in the mundane, the charm and humour of everyday scenes. While Untitled (Roadside Trees) falls into this category, the series also highlights our tendency to perceive trees as static features of our urban environments and forget that they are living, growing things. Charlie also, perhaps unintentionally, highlights a cognitive bias humans can have towards ignoring plants—termed plant blindness. While this concept was coined by two botanists in the 1998, its recent resurgence in news articles links the phenomenon to an under appreciation for plant life and a subsequent lack of interest in the care or protection of plants.
This idea that one must be willing to look in order to appreciate or understand something is important in Charlie’s practice. Having spent some time living in Japan, Charlie has been influenced by the concept of yutori which, although difficult to translate, means to have the time and space to discover what is around you. Applying yutori to observational photography, Charlie leaves room for aesthetic patterns and curious repetitions to be found in one’s immediate surroundings. Charlie’s patient and elegant approach to taking photographs elevates the clumsy and unintentional into poetic gesture. In this way, I see Untitled (Roadside Trees) as a series of portraits that memorialise the humble agency of trees.