The Hidden Sex

I have been extremely quiet on this blog since October, when I put my head down and started working my fingers to the bone to get my work ready for my solo exhibition, 'The Hidden Sex', which opened last Thursday at Craft ACT in Canberra. As it was the first exhibition for the year, it was a crowded opening, so thanks to all of you who braved the heat to come and see the work. The exhibition is on until 16 March 2019, and I will be giving a floor talk at 12pm sharp on International Women's Day, 8th March.

'Collecting Ladies I-III' series, 2018-9
Watercolour, marine algae on Arches 300gsm

'The Hidden Sex' is an exhibition that was inspired by my 2016 arts residency at the National Museum of Australia. My original project was to look at their botanical holdings but I quickly became inspired (obsessed!) by their two unprovenanced seaweed albums.  I have posted about these previously so will not go through my findings again here. The exhibition concept was to highlight the  invisibility of women in both society and science in the 19th century. Women were not allowed to attend university, and were hardly ever acknowledged for their contribution to our knowledge of our Australian flora.  All the kudos usually went to men, such as Government Botanist, Ferdinand von Mueller; William Henry Harvey, the great Irish phycologist; Joseph Hooker, of Kew; and Carl Agardh of Sweden.  However, not many know that Mueller conscripted over 225 women and children to collect for him, and some of these women sent their collections directly overseas to other scientists.  Hence the collections by some of our most noted women collectors, such as Jessie Hussey of Encounter Bay, SA; Louisa Ann Meredith, from Orford in Tasmania, and others are also in overseas herbaria.

'From Land and Sea: Rhodospermae, Melanospermae & Chlorospermae'
Three pairs of vintage kid leather gloves, embroidered with silk

Thinking about women collecting algae and vascular plants in challenging conditions wearing their heavy garments, skirts, boots and gloves inspired me to embroider some vintage leather gloves myself. Gloves were made in supple yet tight-fitting leather so that they could mould the hand into the proscribed shape - dainty, with long tapering fingers; not flaccid yet not too muscular. They also kept the skin unblemished from the sun. Indeed, I had trouble finding a 'glove model' for my photo shoot, as even the largest glove would not fit today's narrow hand! These gloves could not get wet, so there is a paradox between the gloves and the act of collecting. The three sets of gloves represent the three classes of seaweed, but the scientific name for them has altered slightly.  I have chosen to use the classifications instigated by Harvey in the 19th century - Rhodospermae (red); Chlorospermae (green) and Melanospermae (brown).

Women of the 19th century had proscribed pastimes to help them while away the hours - botanical painting and collection, needlework, music and languages. In the mid 19th century, a craze for collecting seaweed was at its height, having taken over from fern collecting, or pteridomania.  Botanical collections were pressed in special albums, on cards and in books, and became the subject of watercolours and dioramas. The series 'Collecting Ladies' references the etiquette of dress (handkerchiefs and gloves!) and the pastimes of lace-making, embroidery and botanical collecting.

Installation view, The Hidden Sex, Julie Ryder.

On the left of the installation photo are a series of large cyanotypes, made with seaweed I have collected on my travels.  The cyanotype process was the first photographic process invented by Sir John Herschel, but it was pioneered by Anna Atkins in the 19th century, who used this new technique to produce handmade volumes of photographs of British Seaweed that she had collected. The New York Public Library are currently holding an exhibition of these images from the two editions they have acquired, but they are only on for another week. My work references the life-sized work made by Anna, but I have enlarged them to make a bolder statement.

'Submerged' 2018-9, Julie Ryder
Vintage handkerchiefs, cyanotype, seaweed

In 'Submerged', a series of 42 vintage handkerchiefs, I have used the cyanotype process again to reference women's work.  The title refers to both the seaweed being submerged beneath the waves as well as the plight of women in academia and society.

My interest in Victorian Glass Microscope slides has also been described in previous posts, but for this exhibition I had always wanted to produce a series that contained real seaweed and referenced the lace making done by women that appeared on handkerchiefs and clothing. 

'Flowers of the Sea, I-VI', 2019
Glass, seaweed, hand engraving.

Each of the six large (25x70cm) glass microscope slides have been engraved with the place of the collection (Orford, Encounter Bay, Ballinskelligs, Frank's Beach, Macmaster's Beach and Bicheno). Some of these related directly to our past women seaweed collectors, whilst others are favourite places that have personal resonance with my seaweed collection obsession. I will show some details in a later post.

Lastly, as an avid collector of anything that the waves throw up, I have made a large wall installation 'Hortus conclusus' (which literally means hidden or secret or walled garden}.  Made entirely from cuttlebones, these have been collected over a period of years and reference the aggressive passion for collecting multiples of everything by scientists and amateur scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries - even to the detriment of the species, and many species did go extinct, as did many ferns and other botanicals.

'Hortus conclusus' 2019 Julie Ryder
Cuttlebone, carving.

In my collection there are two 'types' of cuttlebones that can be found - smooth ones, and furrowed ones, which are very labial in appearance.  These are not known to be 'male' and 'female' types, in fact conversations with marine biologists have not shed any light as to why there are two sorts. As they are NOT seaweeds I was wondering whether they belonged in the exhibition at all, despite my initial intuition and strong intention that they should be.  Whilst researching I came across an unusual feature of the Australian cuttlefish that not many people know about that clinched it's addition to the exhibition.  During mating times, once a year, all the cuttlefish gather en masse in Whyalla, SA, for an orgy.  Well, not really an orgy, because males only mate once, and then they die.  As there are more males than females, competition to hand her their 'sperm sac' (yes literally, with their tentacles!) is fierce, with the larger, more dominant males guarding the females from other weaker males.  However, these 'inferior' males have come up with a unique and very sneaky strategy to sidle up to the females in order to hand over their genes.  They camouflage themselves as females, even to the point of having a fake egg sac, so that they can mingle with them and avoid fighting with the stronger male. Ingenious. Hidden Sex..... 

There is an amazing podcast out at the moment which gives further insight into this gender swapping hosted by Benjamin Law, called Look at Me.  Click here , and listen to the end where a very poignant story is told by underwater photographer, PT Hirschfield (IG: @pinktankscuba)

I do hope you will get to see my exhibition at Craft and if you are on Instagram, you can follow my whole journey with the making of work for the exhibition @julierydertextiles

I love hearing your comments, critiques and thoughts about my work, so please don't be shy! And if you have enjoyed this post, or my work, please pass on my blog and Instagram details to others 💚

Cheers

Julie

New Work

Since I've been back from my wonderful research trip and arts residency in Ireland, I have been getting my thoughts together for an upcoming solo exhibition, to be held at Craft ACT in late January 2019. This exhibition will reflect the research I've been undertaking over the past two years on women botanical collectors, especially the collectors of seaweeds.

Looking at my seaweed collection for inspiration

I also made a significant purchase to help distill my thoughts...the gorgeous Minton tea cup and saucer in the photo above.  Believe me, the tea tastes so much nicer! Looking back through my Irish specimens I decided to have another look at the cyanotyping process that I did with my friend Aroona and her delightful daughter Ruby in Belfast. The blue photo above is one of the Irish Moss specimens (Chondrus crispus) that I made as a teaching example for them. This time, I decided to try it out on fabric to test out the limitations, colour and definition using the Canberra winter sun.

Testing out the cyanotyping with my seaweed in Canberra

The process is basically the same on textiles as it is for paper, however there are differences in the way that the various fabrics uptake the cyanotyping solution.  Drying was also longer than I expected, but I wasn't in a rush so just made a note of that for when I do the final pieces. I made three different types of tests using different fabric bases including some man made materials, just so I could compare the results.  I also guessed how long to expose them for and chose 6, 7 and 8 minutes to see what differences that would make.  After the fabrics had been exposed I rinsed them in cold water for several minutes and then hung out to dry.

Developing the print...WOW!

I was really happy with the results and eager to start making the final pieces for the exhibition once I collect all my fabrics and dried seaweeds together, and make the hard decisions on what to include and what will get left out.

Following Charles Morrison

Time in Belfast was spent at the Ulster Museum repository looking at 19th century seaweed albums, including those connected to Charles Morrison (see previous posts!) Although I was staying one minute's walk away from the Museum, all their albums are housed in a secure facility many miles away. Luckily I had a lovely curator to look after me who drove me there each day and facilitated my access.

My working table within the UM repository.

 This is the album I came to see at the Ulster Museum, so it was an emotional moment for me, having discovered a lot through reading about it only through published papers.

After my research at the Ulster Museum, I left Belfast and drove north to each and every known site that Charles Morrison had collected the seaweeds he put in his many albums.....the Giant's Causeway, Portrush, Moville, Greencastle to name a few. 

The spectacular Giant's Causeway

Northern Ireland Coastline

Portrush

Rockpools at the Giant's Causeway

 Not only did I follow in Charles' footsteps along the wide beaches, rocky shorelines and isolated promontories, I also collected seaweed samples myself from each place so that I could have my own contemporary collection that mirrored his. Except not as prolific...!

Some of my Northern Irish seaweeds

Charles Morrison also collected along several sites along Lough Foyle, so I spent a few days at Derry-Londonderry (the 'PC' version of Derry....one radio announcer also coined the popular term "Slash City"). I was delighted to walk along one of the streets which incorporated this street art of  lovely marine pavers. One side of Lough Foyle is in County Derry, the other is in County Donegal. 

Marine inspired street art on a pavement in Derry-Londonderry

 He also collected at Lough Swilly, also in Co. Donegal. One of the most spectacular beaches I have seen on my travels was near Portsalon, on the far north coast of Lough Swilly. It was a really rough and winding road to drive down, and up, as the roads were so narrow.  Added to this was the temperature - over 30 degrees, something Irish roads are not used to.  The very bitumen was melting as we drove along, sticking to our tyres and also our shoes! But it was worth it in the end to walk on this beautiful and relatively deserted beach near Ballymastocker Bay.

Beautiful Ballymastocker Bay, Co. Galway

Back home now but still processing photos and seaweed for further posts....and getting data together for my research.

Slán Cill Rialaig

5am view from Cill Rialaig

When I first arrived at Cill Rialaig to start my two week residency, the islands and neighbouring headlands were mostly covered in mist, conjuring up the mythology of Hy-Brasil.  For the past week though, the view to the islands have all been exceptionally clear as we have had hot and mostly sunny days.  I have spent some time this week on Ballinskelligs beach, fossicking for seaweeds, sea glass and other flotsam and jetsam to put on the studio windowsill.

Ballinskelligs Beach

Egg cases from the Nursehound catshark

One of the interesting finds has been some egg cases from the Nursehound catshark.  Also known a 'mermaids purses' shark egg casings come in all shapes and sizes.  Most Australians will know the Port Jackson shark egg cases as being architecturally spiralled, like a giant ceiling or wall plug, but dark brown. These egg cases are beautifully adorned with long curly tendrils from each of the four corners. The Nursehound Catshark (Scyliorhinus stellaris) is near threatened in Ireland and the north-east Atlantic. Their eggs are laid amongst the seaweeds just under the low tide mark and take 9 months to hatch. Pity I can't bring these home with me....

Other finds have been a diverse array of seaweeds, including Himathalia elongate, often known as Sea Spaghetti or Thong Weed. It is delicious the way Kerryann from Atlantic Irish Seaweed prepares it with sesame oil and soy, but I was just eating it straight from the sea as well - it has a delightful crunchy nutty texture.

Himanthalia elongata

And of course, you can't come to Ireland without finding Irish moss, or Chondrus crispus, the source of carrageenan used extensively in the food, cosmetics and textile industry.

Chondrus crispus

During my time at Cill Rialaig I have also connected with Alexis and Stephen from Fermoyle Pottery and Garden, just a few minutes out of Dun Geagan. They invited me to come to their studio to decorate a few ceramic platters and it was a great opportunity to try my surface design skills onto a new substrate. It also gave us time to play around with the seaweed I had collected and to experiment with some ideas that might go into production for them.

Painting one of the platters at Fermoyle Pottery

Alexis and Steve have a lovely house and extensive garden complete with a huge poly tunnel which enables them to grow vegetables all year round and try out plants that would not survive the harsh winters. The whole family hangs out there in the long summer nights and it also doubles up as a unique area for drying clothes when the weather is wet (which it hasn't been!). They keep chooks and guinea fowls and grow vegetables, fruits and herbs in an effort to be self-sustainable and to provide their kids with a knowledge of where their food comes from. The poly tunnel is the kids favourite place to hang out because that's where the strawberries and new peas are growing right now!

Playing around with seaweed inspired ceramics

Stephen perfecting the edges of my platter (yes he has shorts on!)

One of the seaweed bowls we are working on.

Stephen and Alexis are very encouraging and they are in the process of setting up a lovely Airbnb above their studio - perfect for a potter (hint hint) and are looking to collaborate with artists on a series of platters for a unique Artist range. They keep talking about what we will do the 'next time I come to Ballinskelligs'😊 and to be perfectly honest I can almost see that happening.....

For the time being it is a day to be finishing off work, as it is wild and windy, overcast and looking like rain outside.  I have to start packing and tomorrow I head off to Kinsale, Cork and Kilkenny.  Then next week I will be in Belfast at the Ulster Museum Herbarium ...stay tuned!

Hello from Ireland

My blogging has been suffering ever since I started posting on Instagram, but I am about to make up for lost time during my 6 weeks in Ireland. Many of my readers will already know of my interest in seaweed, or more particularly, seaweed albums of the 19th century. This obsession started in 2016 when I had an arts residency at the NMA in Canberra, and fell in love with an anonymous seaweed album.

The Port Philip seaweed album, NMA

This obsession lead to the discovery of many more albums by the same collector and I am now in Ireland to undertake further research on him as artist in residence at the Ulster Museum Herbarium in Belfast. I will also be doing an arts residency at Cill Rialaig near Ballinskelligs on the south west coast of Ireland, which starts at the end of this week. A big thankyou at this point to artsACT for supporting my travel to Ireland to undertake this residency.

I touched down in Dublin two days ago and have been walking around getting a feel for the city and its ambience. The predominant matter to hand has been the vote yesterday on the referendum to repeal the 8th Ammendment of the Constitution which bans abortion in all cases except to save the life of the mother. This is a vote to repeal, not a vote on abortion as such, and counting the votes starts today, but watching the news last night there were many counties with 50-75% turnout to vote, although voting was still open till 10pm, long after I had crashed!

Trinity College Botany Bulding

My first full day yesterday was spent in the Trinity College Herbarium where I had organised to view their seaweed albums. This was a rare and wonderful opportunity, and although my collector was not represented there were several other intriguing albums to compare and contrast with our Australian ones.

Trinity College Herbarium

Several of the 19th Century Seaweed albums in the collection

A page showing some beautiful red seaweed

Trinity College Herbarium was the academic home of the eminent Irish phycologist William Henry Harvey. Harvey notably wrote the 5 volume Phycologia Australica, after spending two years from 1854-6 collecting over 20,000 Australian seaweeds. And yesterday I was privileged to handle his handwritten letters and his Traveling Set of Australian seaweeds. This has to be a 12 on a scale of 1-10 in amazing experiences, to know that my hands were touching the seaweeds he picked up from our shores all those years ago. I am so grateful to Staff at TCD for allowing me access entrusting me with these historical documents and objects. And don't worry, I will be going back on Tuesday to see the Book of Kells!

The Herbarium Library also contained the volumes of “The Nature-Printed British Sea-Weeds” by Bradbury and Evans, published in 1859. These intricate prints were created using the unique “nature-printed” process whereby a plant is pressed into a plate of soft lead, leaving an impression from which an electrotype is made. The resultant prints are incredibly detailed and realistic, capturing the fine detail of each seaweed, and it is possible to see and feel the raised surface of the printed inks on the paper.

Front page of one of the Bradbury Nature Printed Seaweed books

A gorgeous Delesseria sinuosa.

Punctaria latifolia

Sphacearia scoparia

Its been a great first couple of days here sightseeing, walking, walking and trying to decide whether the national pastime is smoking or drinking....! Off to the National Botanic Gardens tomorrow to see more suprises in their herbarium.

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Australians "love" their beaches!

Redhead Beach, NSW

I have been up in Newcastle for a couple of days to organise some professional photography of my work in Stitched Up at Timeless Textiles (see previous post). I am staying at Redhead which is about half an hour south of Newcastle itself, about 200 metres from this gorgeous beach. So of course I have been walking along the beachfront everyday, seeing what seaweeds there are to collect, and catching glimpses of whales heading north.  And just to put it into context for those of you in Canberra now....yesterday was about 24 degrees!!

The seaweeds collected from the tideline

It has been my idea of heaven just slowly wandering up the beach, eyes peeled for small pieces of seaweed that have been thrown up by the high tide. Most of what you find on the beach is predominantly Ecklonia sp., so pickings were few and far between along the 5kms I walked.  Luckily I took a plastic bag with me though......

What I found on 'pristine' Redhead Beach

I was shocked to find that rubbish outnumbered seaweeds on the beach, and I was glad for the plastic bag I took along with me to capture it all.  Whilst I was walking along I would estimate there were about 50 other people wandering backwards and forwards with their partners/friends/dogs/ipods.  Not one of them bent down to pick up the obvious rubbish off their beach. So it amazes me that people have the gall to say how much they love living by the beach and what it means to them but they don't bother caring for it.  Here's what's inside the plastic bag.....

A full bag of plastics and rubber picked up from the shore

What you can't see in this photo is the metres and metres of fishing line that littered the shore. Not too far from a man fishing from the beach......I was also shocked that the most prolific plastic item, apart from plastic bags and cigarette wrappers, was Chuppa Chup sticks....I mean seriously over a dozen of them, along with quite a few plastic straws.

Apart from dismay at how nobody else seemed to care about picking up rubbish, it also started me thinking about how items end up on shore and applying this thought to seaweed, shells and other natural objects.  If plastics can be washed up miles from where they enter the sea, and we know they do not originate from the ocean, then do the seaweeds I find on the beach originate from that area, or have they too been in circulation from another beach until they are washed up?  When I collect my seaweed I press it and label it with the date and location, as did Charles Morrison back in the 1800's. These details enable us to see what species were growing at a particular place in time.  Or do they? If you are not dredging the seaweed from a location, then how reliable is it to posit that what you find not the shore comes from that particular beach/body of water?? This and other things to mull over whilst I collect seaweed......and rubbish.

IlluminARTe @ Picton

A one-day-and-night event is happening at the tiny town of Picton this coming Saturday, called IlluminARTe. Readers of my blog may recall a post on my images projected onto several of the historic buildings there in 2015. This year I was one of the invited artists to develop work specifically for the old Bank and Post Office Buildings in the main street and my theme this year will be all things seaweed, following on from my NMA residency and recent discoveries.  There will also be a pop-up exhibition (details above) showing two large works on paper of mine.  I will be manning the exhibition from 1-3pm on Saturday, and the other artists will also be minding the exhibition at some point during the festival.  Picturesque Picton has a population of around 4,500, but I have it on good authority that nearly 20,000 people attend the illuminations! Should be a great night out.

Last chance......

Last week was spent helping deliver 'The Nature Collector' school holiday workshops for children at the National Museum of Australia, as reported in an earlier post. Despite thinking I might be out of my depth trying to inspire four-year-olds in the joys of making rocks and seaweed out of tissue paper, it was actually awesome!

Firstly, the children and their adult escorts went to view the two seaweed albums held by the NMA that I have been researching - The Port Phillip album and The Port Arthur Album. Although these were housed in a glass case, everyone really responded to the colours and fragility of the preserved specimens. Then everyone headed back down to the main foyer where the workshops began.

Welcome to the Workshop! - Ally, Sasha and Amanda from NMA

This program was so engaging we had parents and children, grannies and friends all exploring different ways of representing nature - from sitting and drawing, looking at details through a light microscope, developing sun prints (cyanotyping) of nature arrangements, and helping to make a collaborative underwater collage of seaweeds.

 

 

 

Part of the collaborative seaweed collage

In the first week of the holidays I was in Ballarat at a fibre retreat, but also investigating another seaweed album, at the University so my good friend, sculptor Mary Kayser, started off making the seaweed collages with the children.

There were two workshops a day and there were 30 children per workshop (plus adults and littlies).
Each panel of the seaweed collage measured approximately 2 metres x 90 cm and each day we stuck the panel up onto clear glass barriers so the light could filter through.  By the second week we had started attaching the panels to the other side of the glass, so it became much more layered and complex.

 

 

 

 

Part of the final collage - thanks to everyone who contributed!

 

 

It was an exhausting week, but I was surprised at how quickly the time went during the workshops - we just became absorbed in the task, and I hope I have inspired some up and coming marine biologists, phycologists, scientists or artists through my own artworks on display and also the workshop.

MOST IMPORTANTLY......The seaweed albums are only up for 2 more days at the NMA, so its your last chance of seeing them before they are housed safely back in their archival boxes. Who knows when they will be on view to the public again?

A Tale of Two Cities

National Museum of Australia

For the past three weeks I have been physically located at the National Museum of Australia as part of a research and development grant from the Australia  Council, as mentioned in my previous post. Very broadly, my area of interest is to research the botanical holdings of the NMA with a view to making work that reflects early Australian botanical collections and more specifically the involvement of women as collectors and important contributors to our understanding of Australian botany.

After being trained to use the NMA databases, there are two objects that have initially sparked my interest, that I have started to research further.  These objects are two albums of Seaweed collections made in the 19th century : one from Port Arthur in Tasmania, and the other from the Port Phillip Bay in Victoria. These two albums have been the subject of great interest amongst the People and The Environment (PATE) team, with research initiated by Dr Kirsten Wehner, Head of PATE,  who has written a comprehensive post on the PATE blog here. This article has some lovely images of the Port Phillip album's contents, explains why it was collected for the NMA, and how it is important in the context of social history. Kirsten also goes behind the scenes to show readers how an object is photographed and catalogued for collection. Neither of these albums are on public display - they are quite fragile as you can imagine because they contain real plant specimens, and this could be why there are few left in existence today.

Front page of the Port Phillip Seaweed Album
Photo : George Serras, NMA.

Page of the Port Phillip Seaweed Album
Photo : George Serras, NMA.

The Port Arthur album is completely different from the Port Phillip one, and it is fascinating to see alternative approaches to seaweed collecting.  Although the Port Phillip Album is anonymous with haphazard entries out of chronological order, attempts were made to classify them scientifically and they are mostly identified with a year or place of collection, predominantly from St Kilda and Queens Cliff (now Queenscliff) between the years of 1859 and 1882.


In contrast, the Port Arthur Album has a hand written signature in the front of the book in pencil - "C.Frere", and the cover has a blue printed label attached with the text 'Seaweeds/and Mosses/collected at Port Arthur Van Diemen's Land/1836. However, each of the 25 pages are filled with dozens of different samples, decoratively adhered to the pages.  There are no collection details - no clue whatsoever as to location, date or specimen type.


So far all my research has been electronic - I have been given permission to access the high res digital photographs of each page of the albums, which has been fantastic because it means I can spend time looking at each entry in close detail before I make an appointment with NMA  to view the albums over at the Mitchell repository. The viewing of these two objects will be subject to supervision with a conservator, due to their fragility, so I will probably identify beforehand which page(s) are important for me to to observe first-hand to limit any damage to the albums.


Last week I also re-visited the Cryptogam Herbarium at the ANBG to go through their phycological collection and exsiccate, so my next post will discuss the differences between collecting for a scientific institution and making a hobby collection; how collecting policies differ between a scientific institution and a museum; and how the collection of  similar objects can be approached in entirely different ways.