Entwined
Vivien Lightfoot and Jenny Manning
West Gallery, Belconnen Arts Centre
Opening 6pm Friday 20 May 2022
20 May – 3 July 2022
Jenny’s drawings and prints, and Vivien’s ceramics address our joint concerns about the viability of the unique Australian flora that once astonished Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander, and artist Sydney Parkinson when they arrived on the east coast of Australia in 1770. Sadly, many of our wilderness areas are now colonised with weeds or fast-growing native species that find their footing following such disturbances as land clearing or bushfires.
Our work develops a language of plant interactions. The strong forms of Australian flora are mingled with stems, flowers, and seeds of introduced plants. Banksia cones are strangled by honeysuckle and kurrajong pods are contained within a tangle of bristly oxtongue.
Weeds are now endemic to the Australian landscape so that, to the untrained eye, they are often accepted as normal. Native plants are dangerously outcompeted by many rambling species that have been carelessly introduced. Biodiversity suffers as the native plants are subsumed.
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