As Long as There Were Any Roads to Amnesia and Anaesthesia Still to be Explored: Contemporary Artistic Reflections on the Intertwined Memories of British Imperial History, Trees and Place

This article critically examines contemporary art installations by two British artists responding to two major memory sites of British imperial and national history: 1) Trafalgar Square, one of the biggest squares in central London, a former imperial crossroads, surrounded by Canada House and South Africa House and only steps away from Admiralty Arch, the former official residence of the First Sea Lord ; and 2) Tate Britain, a gallery dedicated to the showcasing of national art, named after, founded and funded by Sir Henry Tate (1819-1899), an English millionaire philanthropist whose wealth derived from the industry of sugar refinery. Seven ancient English oaks made up Anya Gallaccio’s as long as there were any roads to amnesia and anaesthesia still to be explored (2002), while Angela Palmer’s public work, Ghost Forest (2009), showcased ten giant exotic stumps imported from a former British colony, Ghana. Both installations exhibited the bodies of dead trees as their main physical, symbolic and ideological material to activate and reflect on the collective memory of the British Empire, whose expansion long relied on timber production, including for shipbuilding. Drawing from memory studies, postcolonial studies and ecocritical art history, the article probes the intertwining of the repressed memories of British imperial environmental history, trees and place in these two artworks which both stage collective mnemonic experiences articulating Britons’ conflicted relationships with their own past.