A week ago, I opened my solo exhibition 'Fading to Grey' at Gympie Regional Gallery. Its a beautiful exhibition (no bias of course) in a historic building converted to a gallery space.
‘Fading to Grey’ is an exhibition of printmaking, works on paper, installations and artist books that comments on human-initiated transformations of the landscape around us – urbanisation, agricultural monocultures, invasive species, and fragmentation of wildlife habitats. The title of the exhibition references the change in the natural landscape when it is disturbed and developed by humans - the green softness 'fades' to monochromatic grey hard surfaces - brick, cement and bitumen. I'm really passionate about the impacts of urbanisation on wildlife, particularly on insect pollinators and birds.
This exhibition features a few works exhibited previously as part of a partnered solo with Barcaldine artist Jo Taylor, though most of the works have been added to or modified since then.
Having a solo exhibition is a chance to get all those crazy ideas up into a professional gallery space and make a statement about something you're passionate about. Sharing my message is what drives my art practice.
The hero piece of my exhibition is 'Interconnection' - a wall installation of about 300 paper cutouts in the shape of hexagons, illustrating the diversity contained within natural habitats and the importance of pollinators for biodiversity. The pattern on the wall reflects the spiral pattern of the native stingless bee hive. The paper cutouts are made from monotypes, etchings, flight maps, book text, atlas papers and the centre piece is bees wax. The work also features entomological pins, used for pinning insects in museum collections. Great fun to create, sifting through ten years of discarded prints and my stash of papers. Not so much fun to install, as I have to make sure I set up the spiral shape from the first hexagon. :-) Photos below.
Over the coming weeks/months, I'll feature more works from the exhibition, with some work-in-progress photos as well.
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| Installing 'Interconnection' - over 300 hexagon cutouts and lots of blue-tac! |
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| My installation 'assistants' - my Mum Jan and my partner Craig. Lots of help too from gallery staff and volunteers. |
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| Selfie view of part of the gallery space. |
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| Opening day and I'm explaining one of the works to a visitor. |
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| Visitors walking through the gallery. |
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| Here I am giving my speech. |
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| 'Interconnection' - Image credit: Leeroy Todd Photography |
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| 'Interconnection' (view from below) - Image credit: Leeroy Todd Photography |
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