8 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Wednesday18 March 2020

ARTS

Rumpled: Charlotte Ritchie and Mae

Martin in ‘Feel Good’

Suzi Feay

In the first episode of the hyper new

romcomFeel Good, gamine comedian

Mae Martin (played by comedian Mae

Martin) asks her new girlfriend: “Do

you actually think I look like James

Dean?” If there’s anyone Martin resem-

bles, it’s a teenage David Bowie who’s

been given a mild electric shock. Not

bad going for a thirtysomething Cana-

dian who speaks between clenched lips

likeaventriloquist.

Feel Goodcentres round the asymmet-

rical romance between Mae and posh

Brit George (Charlotte Ritchie), who is

so far outside her regular type that Mae

blusters: “She’s like a dangerous Mary

Poppins.” There’s just one problem:

however enthusiastic she may be in bed

(as tenderly raunchy scenes prove),

George declines to identify as a lesbian.

To get out of introducingMae to her

friends, such as braying Binky (Ophelia

Lovibond) and downright obnoxious

Hugh(TomDurantPritchard),sheeven

invents an imaginary boyfriend. It’s not

clear why George cares what these

upper-crustdoltsthink—theywouldno

doubt laugh hysterically for five min-

utes about sex toys and then get over it

— but her highly strung mum Felicity

(Pippa Haywood) is a different matter.

In their world, when “Jonathan Cren-

shaw” turns out to be a pint-sized

blonde,socialruinbeckons.

Plot-wise, George’s reluctance to

come out is over-extended; beyond this

conundrum, she’s a thin, idealised char-

acter, merelya “straight” foil to Mae’s

bug-eyed zaniness. Curiously, Mae is

shown to be an unconfident, stumbling

stand-up, despaired of by comedy club

manager Nick (Tobi Bamtefa). She’s

also (here Martin’s own back-story sup-

plies the theme) a former cocaine

addict, one club-bathroom snort away

fromdoom.

Emotional support arrives via Skype

in the form of Mae’s kooky parents,

played byLisa Kudrow(oh joy!) and

Adrian Lukis (Toast’s bawling military

sibling inToast of London). Closer to

home is Maggie, a dishevelled new

friend from Narcotics Anonymous who

barely keeps mania in check with her

thousand and one activities, including

falconry, teaching meditation to dogs

and making (not solving) jigsaw puz-

zles.Sophie Thompsonexcels as this

touchinglyfragilemotormouth,deliver-

ing an exceptional “I’m an addict”

speechattheNAmeeting.

Satirising the overfamiliar target of

upper-class Britishness,Feel Goodisn’t

nearly as edgy as Sky’s recentWork in

Progress, but fringing the rumpled cen-

tral relationship are beautifully drawn

lesser characters, such as Maggie’s

angryestrangeddaughterLava(shewas

high when she named the tot), played

by Ritu Arya, and Ramon Tikaram as

painfully earnest NA meeting leader

David. Best of all is Phil Burgers as

George’s flatmate, a shambling depres-

sive with hints of shamanistic wisdom:

“When I was a kid all my buddies grew

flowers,” he says mystically. It’s more

thanenoughtobegoingonwith.

Channel4from10pmthiseveningand

All4,channel4.com

In bed with Mary Poppins

T E L E V I S I O N

Feel Good

Channel 4

aaaae

Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s ‘Horizontal — Vaakasuora’ (2011), Hayward Gallery— Linda Nylin

exhibition in the show-off world of

design. The designers have, truly, been

abletoseethewoodforthetrees.

Chiming with this burgeoning con-

sciousness is the reissue of Italian archi-

tect Cesare Leonardi’s beautiful cult

bookThe Architecture of Trees. Leonardi

emerged from the 1960s architectural

avant-garde in Italy; in the 1970s he

turned his attention to landscape and,

ultimately, trees. Together with Franca

Stagi, he produced the book with the

most astonishing pen-and-ink illustra-

tionsoftrees,conceivingofthemalmost

as architecture — picturing them in ele-

vation like building facades. It became a

bible for landscape architects and

designersanditsreissueindicatesashift

in attitude, seeing trees as something

thanmerelyornament.

It also intrigued me to see that pub-

lisher Blue Crow, which usually pro-

duces maps of Brutalist buildings, has

just put out a map of Great Trees of Lon-

don.Trees,itseems,arebeinggivenrec-

ognition and rights not only as beings

butasakindofarchitecture.

Trees transplanted into architecture

are nothing new. From timber pagodas

evoking the layers of branches to Man-

nerist columns in the shape of gnarled

tree trunks, they have always been both

literally (in the form of huge beams and

logs) and symbolically present at the

heart of building. At the 1992 Seville

Expo, architect Imre Makovecz

designed the Hungarian pavilion

around a tree transported from the

plain. It was set into a glass floor, its

roots exposed in the darkness below. It

was a powerful moment, a suggestion

that there is the world of the visible and,

belowit,thesubconscious,justasexten-

sive,justascomplex.

Trees have always been ciphers for

people — standing upright, reaching for

the sky, living together. Myths retell

metamorphoses — think of Daphne

escaping Apollo or Lotis and Dryope, all

transformed into trees. That trees are

rooted in the earth has made them a

popular paradigm with architects who

suggest that the problem with our

buildings is that they are globalised,

meaningless, that they are not rooted in

thelandscape.

But you might also argue that trees

have been adopted by the culture of

architecture as a tool for “greenwash-

ing”. Skyscrapers across the world have

recentlybeenappearingcladinlayersof

leafylingerie.Treesarebeingplantedon

roofs and on balconies, adopted to spare

the modesty of the most unsustainable

structures. You might look at Thomas

Heatherwick’s 1000 Trees development

in Shanghai, a massive, crass heap of

malls and offices which attempts to

disguise its bulk with a sprinkling of

trees in massive concrete pots atop col-

umns. It is the perfect example of a phe-

nomenon which uses trees as symbol

rather than reality, disconnecting them

from the earth, isolating them in con-

crete cells and applying them as cos-

metic decoration to disguise an over-

scaleddevelopment.

Italian architect Stefano Boeri kicked

off the trend with his Bosco Verticale

(Vertical Forest) in Milan. He is now

working on a Forest City in Liuzhou, in

China’sGuangxiProvince.

At Toronto’s Union Centre,Bjarke

Ingels’s designs have created a dim

glass tower with a few trees sprinkled

on top, as if that makes a concrete-

framed behemoth somehow greener.

I

n1799,WilliamBlakewroteinalet-

ter:“The tree which moves some to

tears of joy is in the eyes of others

only a green thing which stands in

theway.”

And trees are still standing in the way.

In the way of new palm oil plantations,

grazing for cattle, for soy and almonds,

for roads and suburbs. But we also seem

to have reached a moment when they

are being appreciated in the broader

culture. Even President Trump agreed

tojointheOneTrillionTreesInitiative.

This month,Among the Treesopened

at the Hayward Gallery in London

(though the gallery is currently closed),

exploring images of trees in contempo-

rary art including works by Robert

Longo,TacitaDean,SteveMcQueenand

William Kentridge, following on from

theTreesexhibition at the Fondation

Cartier in Paris.AndCambio, an exhibi-

tion at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in

London (also currently closed), by Ital-

ian designers Formafantasma, takes a

panoramic view of trees, ecology and

wood. Meanwhile, last year Swiss cura-

tor Klaus Littmann mounted his

remarkable installation at the Wörther-

see Stadium in Klagenfurt, in which 300

trees were planted inside a football sta-

diumandspectatorscametoseethem.

There was something momentously

post-apocalyptic about Littmann’s

installation, presenting trees as some-

thing precious, raising the spectre of

something so familiar yet so often

endangered.Theforestandbushfiresin

Australia and California shored up this

idea of trees as a dwindling resource.

Richard Powers’ novelThe Overstory

(shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker

Prize) represented another reassess-

ment of trees. Inspired by new develop-

ments in understanding the way trees

communicate and support each other,

Powers builds on an ancient under-

standingofforestsasparallelstohuman

communities, rooted in place and con-

nectedtoeverythingaroundthem.

Formafantasma foreground the com-

plexity and variety of trees and the

products they facilitate by asking

whether it is time we acknowledge their

rights as beings. Their Serpentine

exhibition is a deep exploration of

where wood comes from, with exotic

timber samples from the 1851 Great

Exhibition (held just a short distance

from where the gallery now stands),

Time to take a stand for the tree

Trees have become a substitute for

architecturalintelligence.

A more sympathetic approach was

taken by SITE Architecture with its pro-

vocative 1970s designs for stacked sub-

urban housing complex and levels of

trees and back yards. SITE, founded by

James Wines, proposed an amalgam of

land art, Pop art and architecture. Its

remarkable store for the supermarket

chainBestinRichmond,Virginia(1980)

was built around a clump of trees, the

remnants of a small wood. Its walls

looked as if they were crumbling, giving

waytonature.

The only one of the Best buildings to

survive, it is now in use as a church.

These are trees that were already there,

rooted into the ground rather than heli-

coptered in, a very different conception

from the dressing-up box trees of the

decoratedtower.

The builders of almost every age have

looked to trees for inspiration and they

are explicit in architectural form, from

Roman temples and Gothic cathedrals

tothegreatgreenhousesoftheVictorian

age and the airports of our own. When

builders reach the highest point in the

construction process today, they still

celebrate with a topping-out ceremony,

binding a small sapling to the new roof

and drinking a toast of cheap booze in

plasticcups.

Treesremainmorecomplex,mysteri-

ous and beautiful than anything

humanity has created and scientific

research is still uncovering new marvels

such as how they can sense us coming,

communicate our presence and how

theyuseearthandundergroundfungias

a medium, a sentient web. The most

recent suggestion is that they emit

bacteria, negatively charged ions and

essential oils which calm us,making us

feelgoodinthewoods.

It’s no surprise, then, that architects

are still turning to trees not just for

inspiration but for decoration. But that

is a superficial treatment of trees, an

abuseoftheircomplexityandcapability

andablowtotheirdignity.

With an increasing understanding of

the damaging carbon footprint of con-

crete, we will, perhaps increasingly, be

using timber to build. So as a thanks to

the trees we are sacrificing, the least we

could do is to treat them a little more

respect than using them as window-

dressing for second-rate architecture

and, perhaps, appreciating them as an

complexarchitectureintheirownright.

‘TheArchitectureofTrees’isreissuedby

PrincetonArchitecturalPress.‘GreatTrees

ofLondonMap’fromBlueCrownMedia,

bluecrownmedia.com

Trees tower over today’s

art and architecture — though

their roots are not always

deep. By Edwin Heathcote

some from trees now long extinct. It ties

products to places, furniture, musical

instruments and tools, to the trees that

have died to enable them to exist. It is

also, critically perhaps, a self-effacing

Above: Klaus

Littmann’s

installation at

the Wörthersee

Stadium in

Klagenfurt,

Austria. Left:

Abel Rodríguez’s

‘Terraza Alta II’

(2018), Hayward

Gallery

Gert Eggenberger/APA/

AFP via Getty Images;

courtesy the artist and

Instituto de Visión

Trees are being given

recognition and rights

not only as beings but as

a kind of architecture

MARCH 18 2020 Section:Features Time: 17/3/2020-18:34 User:david.cheal Page Name:ARTS LON, Part,Page,Edition:EUR, 8 , 1