English: Tobacco House, Edinburgh, an installation by Ettie Spencer, part of the Edinburgh Art Festival 2008, consisting of tobacco plants growing from St Margarets House, an empty 1970/80s office block on London Road. With its history of harvesting by slave labour in the US, and grown as a cash crop in 3rd World countries, exploitation and a bad smell sticks to this lush looking plant. Yet, grown against a backdrop of an inner city office block, it is intended to provide a rich visual texture and an opportunity for urban dwellers to engage in the therapeutic activity of growing things. Issues about displacement and forced migration in our globalised, consumer-driven world are indicated in this work, as well as the shift from rural to urban environments, and the disconnection that goes with this process. Sprouting out of three of the top four floors of the massive empty building that was the Scottish Pensions headquarters, the work will be seen by passers-by, a very different way of greening the city www.tobaccohouse.co.uk.
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