Australian National Botanic Gardens
Canberra
Canberra
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Australian National Botanic Gardens Canberra |
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6 June – 28 October 2007
Visitor Centre
9am – 4.30pm daily
The Caring for Land exhibition portrays artists’ responses to the land around Canberra and uses the issues and sentiments arising from these representations to encourage viewers to explore and interrogate their personal connection with the local environment.
The works in the exhibition deal with a number of questions connected to Australian appreciations of land. How do we see the land here? Have we succeeded in replacing old visions of land in another place with more accurate appreciations of the land here in the Canberra region and in other regions of Australia? How does the condition of the land affect us? Do we really understand what is contained in the soil beneath our feet and in the biosphere surrounding us? Do we primarily relate to our environment as a stage-set for the drama of collective human history and our own individual lives? Or are we in touch with the myriad of connections between ourselves and non-human beings in the environment, and live with an awareness of our continuing impact on our land? What are the consequences of the ways we frame our lives and of the ways we live in our physical surroundings?
Program of workshops and talks.
 Drawing Breath 2 2007 |
‘During the last two years I have spent time making art on-site in Namadgi National Park. It is a place that holds significant local and personal relevance. My continuing field-based practice comes from a desire to make art that directly engages with places and people and a deeply felt experience. Being in this environment provides me with a space for making that is removed from the studio. It is here that I begin to understand my connection to land and explore postcolonial questions of place and belonging. I am attempting to create dialogue about how non-indigenous Australians locate themselves in this land and contemplate a sense of belonging. Much of my work records an experience of moving through the land and an awareness of my bodily presence in it. I continue to ask if and how my drawings and prints translate a physical or sensory experience, making people aware of their bodies and prompting them to consider their own relationship to the environment.’
 William Morris Kangaroo 2006 |
‘My work examines the contribution that natural history illustration and the decorative arts have made to perceptions of the natural world in Australia. Colonial illustrations of Australia’s flora and fauna contributed greatly to the development of the idea that Australia was a site where the exotic was to be found. As settlers became more familiar with the Australian environment, the excitement initially experienced subsided for many into an uncomfortable melancholy. Feelings of unease and loss were exacerbated by the fact that domestic interiors during the nineteenth century were filled with patterned imagery formed from an idealised European notion of Nature. Within my paintings and prints the subjects of natural history illustrations are combined with patterned imagery in the attempt to allude to settler perceptions of the Australian environment, perceptions which have formed the foundation for many contemporary attitudes and usages of the land.’
 Traces 1 2007 |
‘My work is investigating the site of Gundaroo Common near where I live to find a commitment and responsibility to the Land. The Common is a 200-acre plot of land in the village set aside for commoners to keep cattle (only cows and camels allowed). I walk on this land everyday, sometimes going around the boundaries or just a short walk to the dam and back again. I aim to get people to travel through the image as they do their environment: to observe the tracks of animals, a halt in the flow of looking caused by mist, a fallen tree or a flock of birds. Also to allow the metaphorical meanings of the land to seep in to our world view, the history, memories, associations and emotions that it pulls out. By having finger marks and dirt I aim to get the viewer back in to the soil, to remember its feel, smell, texture and what it is like to play with it. To remember what it is like to be immersed in the environment and not separate from it.’
 Xylem 2007 |
‘This series of drawings and prints are part of an ongoing sequence which investigate botanical forms and elements from the landscape located on the slopes of Mt Ainslie. In part they are an attempt to explore these forms as part of a wider natural order/disorder and also as symbolic of our presence in this particular locality. They are also informed by the proximity and impact of Canberra's constructed space and broader issues of environmental vulnerability.’
 Namadji, Bringing back the Dreaming 2007 |
‘I am bringing back the Dreaming of the Molongolo River and Namadji and the Bogong Moths in my paintings. The moths flew up around the rock paintings and would flock into the caves. The old people used to take the moths off the rocks in the caves and put them in their dilly bags. Later they would cook and eat them, and their bodies would shine.’