After the Archive: Park Life

Abstract

This exhibition questions the fate of public gardens in a context of anthropogenic climate change, re-visualising early Australian botanical empire building and the impacts of introduced botanical species as instrumental to the story of continuing colonial environmental despoliation.Interrogating eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century botanical archives containing rare records of extinct and critically endangered botanical species, has enabled me to develop a body of visual work which mimics what are now fragile deteriorated botanical documents. Following the formal and conceptual lead of Australian artists Joan Ross and Julie Gough, my paintings are replete with stains, watermarks and si..