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Home > ANBG > Exhibitions > Flora Tasmanica

Flora Tasmanica

Opening Address (April 5, 2006)

Gintaras Kantvilas
Tasmanian Herbarium

 

Some 400 years ago, after Botany had emerged out of the clutches of apothecaries and herbalists, and begun its long and tortuous strides towards modernity, it was a fashionable affair. Science and knowledge as pass-times were limited in those days very much to those with time on their hands and gold in their pockets, and many of the key steps in the advancement of Botany were more often than not lavish affairs, combining sumptuous expressions of fine art, dramatic feats of exploration and, of course, good scholarship. One only needs to recall highpoints such as some of the grand botanical publications of the Renaissance, or Hans Sloane’s magnificent combination of dried plant specimens and botanical illustrations in his account of his exploration of Jamaica, or, as far as our part of the world is concerned, Sir Joseph Banks’ Florilegeum- his amazing and beautiful publication of the first discoveries of Australian botanical curiosities such as Banksia.

Somewhere along the way, however, things changed and, as a professional botanist, dare I say for the worse. We botanists, are no longer the toasts of the Royal Court (or its modern equivalents), and rarely are our whims and curiosities funded by the largesse of the wealthy elite. When Robert Brown published his Prodromus, his account of the Australian and Tasmanian floras, in 1810, he was devastated that it was unenthusiastically received and sold poorly. Here was one of the most scholarly botanical works of all time, relevant not only to Australian Botany but to plant classification in general, yet it was a publishing failure. Was this really because it had no pictures and was written in Latin?

Since then, it has been something of a downhill slide for Botany in the community. It is frequently perceived as the domain of stuffy, odd boffins in tweed jackets; most bookshops seem to have difficulty shelving botanical books, placing them somewhere between ‘gardening’ and ‘pets’; and most teenagers I know are either unsure of what it is, think it’s boring, or feel they did it all last term. So the onus is squarely on us, the botanical community, to educate and excite the public, and to gain the patronage of those who can fund our pursuits. We can, and do, undertake this through scholarship. However, people also often need to be reminded that not only are plants essential for life itself, and to the Carbon cycle, or that we need them for food, medicines and other natural products, or that they are integral to the conservation of biodiversity, but that they are also beautiful, and that that beauty alone is worth striving for, exploring, conserving and proliferating.

In that regard, this exhibition will, I hope, make a strong contribution, by exciting and inspiring, and opening the eyes of the visitor to what wonders reside on our doorstep within the plant kingdom.

When I was growing up in Tasmania in the late 1950s and 1960s, the Tasmanian wilderness was certainly an unknown and remote place; the south west was referred to as ‘the empty quarter’. However, many Tasmanians had some idea of what was there. The Tasmanian Hydro Electric Commission was the State’s largest employer and was busy building roads, dams and power stations in the wilderness, and virtually every Tasmanian had a friend or relative ‘at the Hydro’ who could relate stories of the rain, the scrub and the mountains that lay beyond the fringe of civilisation. I was no exception, and had an uncle at the Hydro, but he was a rather unusual man, being an explorer, bushwalker and photographer; the occasional family slide-show brought that remote and awe-inspiring wilderness into our living room. That uncle was Olegas Truchanas, and his photos were to bring about a revolution in Tasmania- in what Tasmanians knew about the wilderness on their doorstep, the value they placed on it, even to the point of stirring political activism, and the way they portrayed it through the genre of wilderness photography.

On occasional visits to my uncle’s house, when he was sorting gear or disassembling his custom-made kayaks, I remember another, younger man, watching intently and helping here and there. This was Peter Dombrovskis, Olegas’s protege, who would ultimately take wilderness photography as an art form to heights previously unimagined.

It is ironic that these first, magnificent interpretations of the Tasmanian wilderness landscape were undertaken by immigrants from the Baltic States, in Truchanas’ case, Lithuania; in Dombrovskis’, Latvia. For in many ways, it is difficult to imagine more different geographical and cultural provenances than Tasmania and the Baltic. Latvia and Lithuania are incredibly flat, their highest points rising only a few metres above sea-level; bedrock lies under many metres of fine soil deposited by the glaciers. Their forests have evolved over the millenia hand-in-hand with human occupation, for people and plants colonised this landscape together in the wake of the retreating ice. Baltic human history incorporates strong druidic and pantheistic traditions involving worship of ancient trees and the ritual of the hunt, for these people were Europe’s last pagans, succumbing to Christian baptism only in the late 14th Century. Contrast this with Tasmania, ruggedly mountainous, rocky and wild, sparsely populated, and as far as its European history goes, firmly dominated by axe, pick and plough. It is indeed ironic that much of the awakening of Tasmanians to their natural world was led by two Baltic migrants.

When Olegas Truchanas died in 1972, a committee of his friends including Peter Dombrovskis worked to publish a book displaying a selection of his photographs. Previously the only vehicle for promoting these images had been through public lectures and slide shows. The challenge to faithfully reproduce the images was challenging in those days of relatively primitive and grossly expensive colour printing, but the final outcome, The World of Olegas Truchanas, was a huge success, running to several impressions and effectively catapulting images of Tasmanian wilderness onto the coffee tables of the world. It also paved the way for Dombrovskis himself, and as technology improved and demand grew, Peter’s photographs began to appear everywhere: in calendars, books, diaries, cards. His famous image of Rock Island Bend was the icon of the anti-dams campaign in Tasmania in the 1980s, and today it is commonplace to see his photographs everywhere: we have them at home, in our offices, and we send them to our friends and colleagues overseas as gifts, and as an insight into the beauty of the place where we live. Furthermore, his work has spawned a whole movement of wilderness photographers, not only in Tasmania but elsewhere.

The ease with which we ourselves acquire photographs these days- after all, it can be simply a case of driving out into the bush and pointing the camera at something- belies the depth of Peter’s photographs, for these are not idle snaps from the comfort zone: rather they are the product of often-intensely gruelling expeditions, requiring physical strength, mental toughness, endurance and tremendous patience, and it is out of the effort that the artist expends that comes the intimacy with the subject, and an understanding of its moods. They are timeless scenes that invite us to immerse ourselves into a world that seems purer, simpler and more dramatic than the one we live in daily. The words of the English landscape painter Constable, whose works are on display at the National Gallery at the moment, seem particularly relevant: “we see nothing until we truly understand it”. Dombrovskis captures his personal interpretation of the totality of the scene, and leaves us to find the details for ourselves. The titles on the works here are simply plant names, but the images capture far, far more.

The display of Lauren Black’s paintings here forms a powerful contrast to Dombrovskis’ work as a medium for presenting images of our flora. For unlike Dombrovskis, Lauren unteases and depicts the botanical character of each individual species. Art has been the indispensable and inseparable companion of Botany for centuries. Pictorial representation of the diagnostic features of plants predates the very development of the precise language and technical terminology used to describe them. It is the means for recording and demonstrating the subtle features that make each plant species unique. As the old saying goes ‘a picture says a thousand words’. Botanist and artist have worked hand in hand to reveal the diversity of the world’s flora. In our part of the world, behind, or perhaps next to, the botanist Sir Joseph Banks stands the artist Sydney Parkinson; with Robert Brown is linked Ferdinand Bauer, still regarded as the greatest botanical artist of all time; and in much more recent times in Tasmania, we have had the partnership of Winifred Curtis and Margaret Stones.

Since her arrival in Tasmania in 1999, Lauren has established herself as a leading and much sought-after botanical artist. Her work has featured in many exhibitions, often combined with herbarium specimens and other objects within historical, cultural or scientific contexts. Like Dombrovskis’s photographs, Laurens’ paintings and drawings are born of patience, observation and a total immersion in the mood and subtlety of her subject. It is so refreshingly reassuring that in this age of impatience and ease, of take-away digital photography that can seemingly achieve anything, that the centuries-old tradition of botanical illustration is flourishing, for no amount of ‘point and click’ can ever compete with what the careful, trained eye can see, and the skilful, steady and patient hand can depict.

Lastly I must turn to the porcelain of Les Blakebrough, regarded as one Australia’s greatest ceramic artists. Depicting flora and other botanical themes on porcelain is also a very old tradition. In the late 18th century, for example, the Danish botanist, George Christian Oeder, initiated a project to depict the plants of Denmark in a series of folio-sized botanical illustrations, Flora Danica. The aim of the project was to popularise Botany and so enhance general knowledge of Denmark’s plants. To that end, the work, which ultimately comprised 51 parts, 3 supplements and 3240 copper engraved plates, appeared as a cheap, plain edition that was widely distributed, and a lavish hand-painted edition. The images were also transferred to porcelain, more than 1800 pieces in all, to serve as Royal gifts and for use by the Danish Royal family. Through all this, Oeder served as Professor of Botany by Royal decree, the self-governing Royal Botanical Institution was established, and the whole project was supported financially by the Crown. Those were the days!

Les Blakebrough’s Flora Tasmanica emulates in a rather more modest way Oeder’s grand Flora Danica, depicting six of Lauren’s images of Tasmanian endemic plants onto plates of the finest porcelain. The plants include Lomatia tasmanica, or Kings Holly, a species represented by just one genetic individual which, at more than 43 000 years old, must potentially be the oldest living organism on the Earth. It is so fitting that more than 300 years later, one suite of the collection on display here was presented to Crown Prince Fredrick of Denmark and Tasmanian-born Crown Princess Mary Donaldson as a wedding gift.

Thus we have come full circle, for Blakebrough’s work has effectively delivered Botany back to the royal courts of Europe from where it once received so much of its patronage and impetus all those years ago.

I now invite you all to explore and immerse yourselves in the images on display here by declaring this exhibition open.

Gintaras Kantvilas

Illustrated: Edition Four Nothofagus gunnii, 2004. Maker: Les Blakebrough
Medium: Southern Ice Porcelain, burnished gold lustres & ceramic enamel decals developed from original illustration by Lauren Black.



Updated 7 April, 2006 , webmaster, ANBG (anbg-info@anbg.gov.au)