Eija-Liisa Ahtila's video Horizontal — Vaakasuora (2011) features six screens that together show a vast evergreen, tilted 90 degrees.
Ahtila, like many of the 38 artists in this new Hayward exhibition, evokes the elusiveness of trees, the struggle to represent their majesty; only by filming it six times along its height and projecting it on its side can its awesome scale be captured.
But Ahtila’s pine is also metaphorically felled, and many of the works here inevitably suggest fragility. Simryn Gill’s photographs show plastic debris choking Malaysian mangroves. Roxy Paine’s diorama is all too familiar: a landscape reduced to ash. Steve McQueen and Sally Mann’s images feature landscapes scarred by white suprematism and war.
At times, the show feels scattergun: it’s at its best when thematic groupings are tight or where there are several works by a single artist, like the painter George Shaw’s skewed memories of the woods near his Midlands home or Giuseppe Penone’s poetic exploration of the essence of trees. It’s sprawling, but there’s much here to absorb, unsettle and even, occasionally, provoke wonder.
March 4 to May 17 (020 3879 9555, southbankcentre.co.uk)
