Biomorph

Montsalvat Arts Center

2022

This exhibition brings together 3 separate but closely linked bodies of work, focused on an appreciation of growth, movement and change in the living world. These works explore the way we see and experience flowers, as an icon of beauty, touching on memories and the sensory perception of being present amongst nature.

The first body of work, completed in 2020, responds to the sensory experience of visiting Singapore’s expansive ‘city in a garden’. This experience was brought home to the studio for a long contemplative period in lockdown, exploring surreal biomorphic and exotic orchid forms. The work seeks to provide an altered perspective and relationship with reality by prompting the viewer to search for familiarity in the absence of identifiable connections.

The second body of work, completed in 2021, finds this exotic quality within the Australian landscape . Drawing on the compression and expansion of energy in the natural world via botanical lexicons, this body of work creates a painterly language for describing the somatic and embodied experience of painting.

The final body of work comprises of monoprints, completed during the storms and blackouts of 2021, reflect the desire to highlight a narrow focus of smaller inconsequential native orchids. The smaller scale of the works speaks to a more intimate relationship to the subject, during a period of introspection.