Translating Trees Feedback
Presented as part of Floating Land (Escape Making) 2025, Translating Trees consisted of six hour-long walking tours across three distinct locations. These free public tours invited participants to listen to and read the voices of trees. The scripts, shared between artist and participant, were developed in the lead-up to Floating Land and emerged from the artist-to-tree conversations (translated telepathic responses).
Below is a selection of feedback received following the event.
“Daydreaming with trees was always my escape from this world, my blissful, joyful, meditation, my peaceful time. Thank you for reminding me, for bringing all that back, of the joy I share with trees”. – Ginette Flamia
Opening Tour of Translating Trees at Noosa Regional Gallery
The Translating Trees experience was really grounding. It felt like I was seeing the world through the eyes of a tree — something I’d never really thought about before. Fiona’s words were beautiful & evocative, and I found myself slowing down and noticing things I usually overlook. I left feeling more connected to nature and with a deeper appreciation for the quiet life of trees. Why wouldn’t trees as living breathing entities have unique personalities & perspectives!
I loved walking through the beautiful Boreen Point and I loved the way the experience made me think differently
I realised that the trees are alive — not just as a static object, but as a living being with its own rhythms and presence. That shifted how I think about nature and made me see trees as active participants in the world around us.
Thank you for this wonderful experience, Fiona. I can’t wait to see what you get up to next xx
/Peta Huggett
Opening Tour of Translating Trees at Noosa Regional Gallery
/How did you feel after experiencing Translating Trees?
Transcendent
/What specific part of the tour did you enjoy the most?
Reading out the trees answers
/What specific part of the tour did you enjoy the most?
A deeper respect for our leafy friends. Fiona is incredible! This work is pure magic
/Ketakii Jewson Brown
Weyba Creek Park Tour
To slow down and notice the trees around us. Even the ‘ordinary’ ones at the park, along the road etc… and to remember the sense of connection that’s all around us! I liked the gentle audience participation. It made the trees feel like part of the group. But specifically, hearing the conversations was the best bit! (It made me feel) calm, happy, connected. Noticed things I had not seen before! Left me with a peaceful feeling.
/Shaye Hardisty
Opening Tour of Translating Trees at Noosa Regional Gallery
I felt grounded and calm. It was a wonderful experience watching Fiona engage with the trees and the people. I particularly enjoyed the way Fiona engaged various participants to speak the part of the trees. This not only made the whole experience participatory, but also ensured that each tree spoke in a unique voice. Trees are individuals and have a sentience and a language of their own, even if we can’t understand it.
I was inspired by the Translating Trees tour. I wrote about the experience and what I took from it.
Thoughts after Translating Trees *
May I have the patience
To talk together with trees,
To sit still in the solidity
Of their stationary sentience,
To listen with intention
To their long-grown wisdom,
To accept with humility
A love-language not my own.
*inspired by Fiona Harding and the Translating Trees Tour.
/Peter Hogg
Final Tour of Translating Trees at Noosa Regional Gallery
I felt a kind of deep and abiding peace. A sense of comforting unity in which my individual self was simultaneously dissolved and exalted alongside the people who attended the tour with me, and with the natural world.
The tour itself was a kind of magic, but my favourite part was the excited conversation of spirit and philosophy that bubbled among attendees in the wake of the tour, our most noble and immaterial selves having been stirred to the surface by the experience.
I remain deeply moved by the experience and profoundly grateful to Fiona for facilitating such. I had already believed myself intrinsically connected to the humming fertile heart of this green world, but Translating Trees has amplified and reinforced that belief in a joyous act of shared communion.
/Ben Hines
Final Tour of Translating Trees at Noosa Regional Gallery
In our (society’s) materialistic life view : the artist’s deeply sensitive translation is both uplifting and hopeful that positive change is possible and more importantly necessary. Inviting audience participation to pose questions to trees : hearing tree’s intuited response. A calm and refreshed optimism.
Fiona Harding’s work informs a sense of wellbeing : we have unconsciously forgotten.
/Ardleigh Cleveland
Opening Tour of Translating Trees at Noosa Regional Gallery
