Lights, Camera, ACTION!

The Old Post office building in Picton with Seaweed Album artwork

Just thought I would share some photos with you from IlluminARTe in Picton last Saturday night.  The two buildings I was asked to provide artwork for were the Old Post Office and the Old Bank buildings on the corner of Menangle Street. My inspiration for the Old Post Office was the Charles Morrison Seaweed Album from the NMA that I have been researching. The image above is reconstructed from the intricately tooled leather cover of the seaweed album that I have reconfigured to fit the building.

Animated seaweeds gracefully floating across the facade.

I worked with Jerome Pearce from Just Pixels in Sydney who animated the images on both the buildings.  The Old Bank Building on the opposite corner was inspired by the beautiful lithographs drawn by William Henry Harvey, the noted Irish phycologist,  for his five-volume Phycologia Australica that he wrote after his 18 month visit to Australia, New Zealand and the Friendly Islands in 1854-5.

Underwater discoveries with HW Harvey lithographs

I think Jerome had fun with this one and I thank him for taking some underwater stills off the beach near his house.  This building was a little more difficult to read as the lower portions of the building could not be lit because they were so recessed, so a lot of the imagery towards the bottom got a little lost with people and signage etc getting in the way.  

During the day the other artists and myself manned the pop-up gallery where we showed are our artworks and I thank Susan Conroy and Wollondilly Council for making this all happen.  It was a great night, lots and lots of people and plenty of food and stalls to while away the hours.

The Nature Collector

As many of my readers will know, last year I spent 6 months at the National Museum of Australia as an artist in residence with the PATE department, which was documented here and in earlier blog posts.

Two of the objects I was fascinated with were seaweed albums from the 19th Century, one from Port Arthur in Tasmania, and the other from Port Philip in Victoria. There have been some exciting developments with these albums, which will be announced this weekend in The Age and possibly The Canberra Times.

Alone with the Port Phillip Seaweed Album!

Being photographed at the NMA Repository by Alex for
the upcoming Bridie Smith article for The Age 

However, as a direct result of my residency and research the albums themselves will be on display for the very first time from 8th April until 22nd April at the NMA.  This will co-incide with the school holiday workshops  called The Nature Collector that start next week.

Amanda and Kate from Education admiring my pressed seaweeds

The Education team at the NMA have been working hard to
collect natural materials in preparation for the workshops

In front is a cabinet filled with my pressed seaweeds and in the
background are the notebooks, papers, cyanotyping materials
that have been prepared by the Team for each workshop. Awesome!

Unfortunately I will be interstate for the first week, but my good friend, Canberra sculptor and artist Mary Kayser, will be inspiring children to create an enormous collaborative seaweed collage at the Museum.  I will be back for the second week to finish off the program. Children will also get to start a nature Journal that they can take home with them, and create some cyanotyping with natural materials. More information and bookings can be found here.

Access Visit to the NMA

Access visit to the NMA at Mitchell. Myself, Dr Christine Cargill (ANBG)
Tania Riviere and Catriona Donnelly from the NMA.
Photo: Jason McCarthy, NMA

 On Monday, Catriona and I had organised an access visit to the NMA repository in Mitchell to view the two Seaweed collections I have been blogging (and raving about) since I started my residency here at the NMA in July. I invited Dr Christine Cargill, Curator of Cryptogams at the ANBG and my long time scientific collaborator,  to also come and view the albums so that she could give us her professional opinion on the cryptogams that had been collected in both albums.  These included ferns and mosses collected in both Tasmania in 1836 (Port Arthur Seaweed Collection) and Drouin and Ferntree Gully in 1882 (Port Phillip Seaweed collection).


Because of the extreme fragility of the two albums - both in terms of plant matter and the paper of the books - we could only view the albums under the supervision of Tania Riviere, Conservator with the NMA. Each book was housed within its own custom made cardboard box, and then placed within an archival box for storage.  When they were bought out for viewing they were placed on a large, bean-bag type of pillow that supported the spine of each book as Tania turned the pages for us with gloved hands. The bags were moved and repositioned as the weight of the book changed during the viewing.


Christine was able to get quite close to the pages of cryptogams and identified that amongst them were some examples of hornworts, liverworts and lichens as well as mosses, ferns and lycopods.

Christine getting up close and personal with her eye-piece
Photo: Jason McCarthy, NMA

Christine finds a hornwort hiding amongst the mosses....
Photo: Jason McCarthy, NMA

It was such an interesting and informative visit, because each of us had our own inputs and insights into various aspects of the collection. Tanya made some very interesting observations about the condition of the Port Phillip album, how it had been repaired as well as  other modifications that had been made to it throughout its lifetime. I had been studying both albums for weeks via their high res images on the NMA database and I had already documented the contents of each page, so I knew what I wanted to look at and investigate further once I had access to the real albums. It was also the first time that Catriona had viewed the books first-hand and we were both surprised at the physical dimensions of each book.  For some reason, I expected the Port Arthur album to be small, when in reality it was about scrapbook or ledger size. The Port Phillip album was much thicker than I imagined and the discrepancies between the elaborately tooled front-cover and the back cover remain a mystery to be investigated. 

Despite the level of detail you can observe from hi-res images, what struck me is that it is the power of the actual object, its physical presence, its colouring, the mustiness of the pages and the beauty and intricacy of the actual plants, their forms, colours and shapes,  that impacted on me the most. It was really a privilege to see these objects and the visit has only made me even more enamoured and determined to find out everything I can about them, and similar botanical collections of the 19th century.

And finally.....at last!! I have had two donations of buckets of seaweed from the north and south coast with which I can start playing! I have been hanging out to get my hands on various types of seaweeds to start exploring the materiality of them, to draw them and to preserve them just like the many women of the 1800's before me.

This week my solo exhibition, 'Chromophilia' opens at Timeless Textiles in Newcastle, so my next post will be from there.

A fond farewell

The past couple of weeks since my last post has seen me continuing to research the Seaweed albums at the NMA, tracking down signatures and handwriting to establish a line of provenance for one of them. My interest in these albums was inspired by the contagious enthusiasm of Senior Curator and Head of PATE, Dr Kirsten Wehner. It was a chance meeting with Kirsten nearly two years ago that started the ball rolling for my residency with PATE at the NMA.

So it was with great sadness that this week the Museum said a teary farewell to Kirsten, who is off overseas to start a Masters in London. I was proud that the PATE staff chose one of my artworks as a farewell gift for Kirsten, and the following day the team and I went on a group outing over lunch to see my glass work in the Hindmarsh Prize at the Canberra Glassworks, then on to my studio so they could see what I get up to behind those huge closed doors at the bottom of the dusty shed on a secluded horse agistment!

Catriona, Jen, Kirsten and Martha viewing my work

Farewell Kirsten, thanks so much for the opportunity to work with you briefly on my project. I'll keep you updated with photos of the work as it unfolds. Safe journey and happy studying.