Turf 2004 curated by Renee Vara

40 square meters of live, fresh, green turf will be DUMPED at the luxury Melia Hotel at Regents Park for the Scope Art Fair, London.
This “intervention” – rather than installation – is an act, an action, to confront society’s ideas regarding nature verses culture. After 1 month of negotiation and Scope Fair Producer’s official sanction of the project, Green intervention was rejected the day before the opening of the fair.
The Melia Hotel Management deemed the turf and its “dirtiness” as “inappropriate” to the luxury context of the hotel.
As a political project, Bajo’s work revisits the ideas first initiated by Walter De Maria and the Anarchitecture movement of the 60s and 70s. Their action against “hard-shelled cultural reality” is expanded in the piece as Bajo exposes how contemporary culture attempts to confine, construct and control nature – often attempting to relating it to the depersonalized and manufactured grid of “civilization” and cannot accept its vulnerability.
Ultimately, this is a loosing battle as nature will continue to break the boundaries constructed by culture – whether they be psychological, administrative or psychological structures built to deny nature its expression

PS: the dumped turf was after re-planted in the backyard of a nearby church

Renee Vara