Bark, leaves, soil, berries: conversations on place
A Paradoxa Collective Production
Gallery 275, Ivanhoe Library and Cultural Hub, 23 April - 23 May 2021
Penelope Aitken, Smoak (& mirrors), 2021, Eucalyptus, kunzea and mistletoe ink, charcoal, oil and acrylic paint on boards with found objects including rusty metal, wire, magnets and mirrors. (Installation dimensions variable). Image: Lucy Foster
Paradoxa Collective comprises four Australian contemporary artists: Penelope Aitken, Anna Farago, Siri Hayes and Susan Wirth. Based in the outer north east of Melbourne, Australia, we share an interest in peri-urban landscapes, connecting to the land through practical restoration and regeneration activities combined with site-informed art making.
In Bark, leaves, soil, berries, Paradoxa Collective artists explore personal and broader connections and complexities regarding relationships with the natural environment. Presented at the Ivanhoe Library and Cultural Hub, this exhibition is an extension of Satellite of Love, held at the Eltham Library from January - March 2021. Both shows were informed by events at Bunjil Reserve, Panton Hill on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country. These included a series of curated walking talks designed in 2019-20 as a cross cultural exchange of knowledge as well as ongoing revegetation activities as members of the ‘Friends of the Bunjil Reserve Food, Fibre and Medicine Garden’.
Smoak (& mirrors) is a big modular drift comprising multiple square panels and found objects - mainly from Bunjil Reserve. The panels are painted with ink distilled from eucalyptus and mistletoe leaves, and feature Kunzea leptospermoides (Yarra burgan) flowers, a common indigenous shrub that colonises the area after clearing or bushfire. The title, 'Smoak' uses the spelling recorded by Joseph Banks in his diary on first seeing the east coast of Australia from the Endeavour in 1770, where plumes of campfire smoke clearly signalled a peopled landscape. Smoke has also played a significant role during our activities at Bunjil Reserve where numerous smoking ceremonies have been held to welcome public activities, to educate visitors and remind us that the land has never been ceded. Among other things, the work considers 250 years of fraught and fruitful interaction between Europeans and Aboriginal people in Australia.
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