'Hollow Bodies' speaks to our human condition and our need to protect ourselves in times of crisis; to don a metaphorical armour in the hope that our fragile and complex place within the natural world has the ability to persist, and to endure. 

Through the stripping of bark, casting of branches, burning of trunks and coatings of pine tar, Bainbridge explores what is imbibed and held within these trees throughout their lifetime. He looks to how their environment has shaped and changed them, and in doing so, reflects on our own place within the natural world, and its effects upon us.

The scale of these sculptures has an intimate monumentality, they speak to the human, yet they connect us to the expansive landscape of the Cairngorms. To experience them up close is to be placed within ‘their’ landscape, ‘their’ environment; transported or transplanted back to the Highlands and the hillsides where they once stood.

There is a confrontation that takes place on encountering these ‘Hollow Bodies’. They have been denuded, stripped of their bark, their armour and their skin. In this act of ‘othering’ Bainbridge questions what have they now become? He shifts the narrative from growth, strength and fertility, to that of vulnerability, fragility and mortality. Each tree offering a different lament on what it means to be human, to exist within a fragile and ever-changing ecosystem.