‘Lost Australian Botany and New Fictions’

2000

Brenda May Gallery, Sydney

These paintings are part of a body of work which specifically references Botanical specimens which once grew and sometimes flourished on what has become our continent.  Some of these specimens date back to the formation of Cyanobacteria that formed over 2000 million years ago and created an atmosphere that made diverse life on earth possible through the Algaes, Lycopods, Horsetail ferns, Conifers, Cycads and Angiosperms to more recent floras many of which have their origins in these ancient plants.

The fictions in these images are a way of re-imagining these plants within the context of our own culture and scale and create narratives that explore the idea of deep time and more specifically locating the place where particular plant fossils were found and relating these to contemporary land use and associated cultures.  In doing this, I have also played with images from Australian paintings which are often referred to within the titles.