2006

Botanica wonderlands

Renata Buziak
Paul Cotelli
Anna Ryan
T.Jacek Rybinski

Peter Annand

Lindy Wissler

The possibilities of photography propel these artists into an exploration of the natural world. Their investigations reveal inner galaxies of buds within a flower, remnant elderly trees now encircled by an urban fabric, a hidden geometry created by vegetative decay, quiet glimpses between the exterior and interior of an intimately known domestic space and layered fragments of a life’s journey.

What also connects some of these artists are personal histories that begin in places other than Australia. Their works refer to the omnipresence of Gondwana flora but they also contain talismans of thoughts and references to past lives and cultures.

Sweeping landscape photography that commands entire vistas has become ubiquitous as the way in which we now, in effect ‘consume nature’. We no longer need to walk amongst wild landscapes but can ‘be in’ nature from armchair comfort. In contrast, the works by these artists is marked by an effort to push the potential of the photographic medium in inventive ways to bring individual response to the experience of nature.

Perhaps this has come from earlier studies in other art practices –three of the artists bring knowledge of printmaking to their photography which points to their concern for mark making and the tactile surface – be it real or imagined.

There is an experimental alchemic trail running through photographic history which continues today despite, or rather in spite of the new dominance of digitization. Renata Buziak has developed a series of biochrome images that are made literally with the help of the natural process of decomposition. Vegetative material is placed on photographic emulsion and the minutiae of various biological and chemical reactions are captured over time. The resulting image is more than a chemical portrait – The moist brown piles of leaf litter that are the succour and sustenance of great forests are transformed here into brilliantly hued constellations.

Paul Cotellis’ colour portraits of individual flowers owe a debt to the powerful legacy of pioneer photographer Karl Blossfeldt whose plant studies made over one hundred years ago were intended as simple teaching aids yet have gone on to inform generations of photographers. Cotellis’ portraits allow us to peer inside the depths of a flower for a bee’s eye view of stamen, buds, blossoms and umbles and so reveal the almost surreal architectural structure of the humble canola or the dazzling intricacy of a wattle.

A restrained calm pervades the delicate digital compositions of Anna Ryan. She notes the influence of 19th Century Japanese woodblock prints for their light touch and unexpected compositions. Elements of a recent past life in Europe, of snatches of conversations, flowers, shells - a fond detritus accumulated as memory are strewn over the page. Framed by the naked fingers of winter trees, we can imagine that the art is a way of holding on to and making sense of past experience.

With a background in a variety of art forms including jewellery and printmaking Tadeusz Jacek Rybinski has made an installation of “leaves “’of printed paper - both an artists book and a virtual tree he intends to create a symbolic canvas for the presentation of the renewal and continuity of the life cycle.

The older Queensland house is rarely sealed tight. Light, shadows and breeze permeate interior spaces and the shaded depths of rooms. Lindy Wisslers’ series of photographs, Transitions feels like a portrait of an intimately known domestic space – taken as if with closed eyes, movement guided by the slight caress of fingertips along well-worn furniture. Nature here is only partially glimpsed, and the viewers gaze travels over a once treasured figurine now lying prone, out to a spindly chair and shaded veranda.

One of the delights of urban Brisbane is the presence of the gargantuan fig trees that survive often awkwardly on a traffic island or fence line, their tendril like roots spreading out haphazardly. This is not a city of clipped hedges and contained neat plantings. Moisture and heat create botanical profusion, casting shade and offering a sentinel like connection to a landscape older than white settlement. Peter Annand captures some of these great trees, some native, others introduced species, in a self confessed deadpan fashion. Their spreading branches have become almost self-contained eco systems, supporting bats, birds as well as the occasional human resident and stand as an ongoing reminder of the enduring power of nature.

Virginia Rigney