Working towards Exhibition 7 July 2018

GARDEN

Following our successful exhibition 5WAYS, from January 2016, Linda, Lily, Lyn and myself have been working towards our next exhibition, GARDEN which will open on July 7th, 2018.

 

Having purchased The Rusty Roo in 2000,  we immediately started establishing a garden. With the help of family and friends, almost eighteen years on, it is now a delightful haven. 

 

So, blessed with a garden, I now needed to focus.

Investigating the topic I came across a study conducted by Mike Stevens at the University for NSW entitled the Congruent Garden: an investigation into the role of the domestic garden in satisfying fundamental human need.

We have a plethora of flowers, plants and we have bees. Yah!

We also have an abundance of  wild-life visitors.

 

This study establishes that gardens satisfy nine human needs: freedom, identity, creation, understanding, Participation, Leisure, Affection, Protection and subsistence.

Armed with this idea I started investigation what each of those needs means to me, and how I would go about representing them.

Keeping a diary, taking numerous photographs, I started with drawing and then completed some paintings. I wanted to portray the fact that we are all interdependent ... we each need clean air, fresh water, unsullied soil and a ratio of sunshine . . .  and that we all need gardens.

 

 

However, no matter how much I thoroughly enjoy painting, I soon realized that this did not offer me the ability to truly demonstrate the otherworldliness of a garden.

The unseen happenings and the fleeting atmospheric changes.  I needed a way to show the hidden and the mysterious - to hint at the myriad of occurrences which make a garden interesting.

 

 

I knew I needed to show the grace and beauty of this place in which we find solace.

Armed with this desire I started hunting for a new technique.

EXHIBITION CROSSDALE4 Toogoolowah February 2018

Thrilled to be exhibiting with these talented artists.

Sharon Lee
A pouch is no protection from a bull-bar
Acrylic on canvas

Jane Harthoorn Williams

Reconciliation 11

Porcelain

Jan Williams
Dragonfly Lady
Cold cast iron and Polyester fiberglass

Ian Clark
Rift
plywood

Sharing of PLACE

We have always been aware of the need to make as little impact as possible on this piece of land we have claimed as OUr OWn. We have endeavoured to maintain the uncleared vegetation, while starting a re-planting program, so that we may maintain a diverse environment, that will sustain us all.

Some times it feels like a terrible swim against a current of - ' not my problem'

So when I was recently approached to submit some work for an online gallery, concerned with the study of Human-animal relations - A shared environment, I was more than thrilled to do so.


What an incredible diverse wildlife we are lucky to share this land with.

Animals, People - A share environment

10 - 13 July 2011, Griffith University, Brisbane


Some of the most challenging and exciting new work in Australian studies has emerged from the Fine Arts. In Honour of these human-animal artists, and their subjects, the Australian Animal Studies group has developed and online gallery. The gallery aims to promote the artists and the animal issues they care deeply about.

http://www.aasg.org.au/gallery

The Australian Animal Studies group and Environmental Futures Centre proudly present the 4th Biennial Australian Animal Studies Group Conference 2011 on; Animals, People - a Shared environment.


This conference will bring together animal theorists and scientists from a broad range of academic disciplines with representatives from non government and government officials from several nations and representatives from industry, to examine the interrelationship between human and nonhuman animals from cultural, historical, geographical, environmental, representational, moral, legal and political perspectives.

A very worth while study . . . .