Excited to announce I will be exhibiting a new body of work ‘Strength Totems - Wildflowers’ as part of the Lime Flamingo Collective exhibition 2023, 35S: 149E – Canberra Lived. Sally Black, Jodie Cunningham, Agi De Simone, Roger Hancock, Julie Herring, Helen Hyslop and Gillian Jackson, Friday 31 March to Sunday 14 May 2023, Belconnen Art Centre Generator Gallery
Artists Statement
On my walks I smell the eucalyptus and the fresh Canberra air and delight in finding intensely coloured and exotically shaped luminous gems in the grass. Predominantly yellow and purple (complimentary opposites) they glow against the multiple hues of green. Being present in Ngunawal country, immersed in the bush gives me joy and comfort and I am so grateful for the continuing care the Ngunawal people have given this place. For me native flowers have become symbols of hope and renewal - abundant after the La-nina rain they are a reminder of how precious this place is, how precious our climate is and how we must take urgent action.
In the series Strength Totems – Wild flowers, pillars of stylised native local flowers are stacked to form totems of hope. Some of the flowers chosen have been used for thousands of years in Ngunawal culture as food and medicine – their value to human existence beyond aesthetic and symbolic - life sustaining and enriching. The totems float powerfully on patterned backgrounds that allude to the suburban environment – to breezeblocks and wallpapers - a nod to Canberra’s mid-century design legacy intermingled with the ‘bush capital’.
