Bark, leaves, soil, berries: conversations on place, installation view, Art Gallery 275. Soft Paintings (Bunjil Reserve and beyond), 2021, Cotton & linen fabric (dyed with eucalyptus, native cherry, bark, leaves and iron) worn clothing, cotton and silver thread. 4 x 60 x 60cm each (dimensions variable) Mapping Meditation II, 2020, Pigment print on dibond, Photo: Samara Clifford for Anna Farago 75 x 75cm

Bark, leaves, soil, berries: conversations on place

Paradoxa Collective

Art Gallery 275, Ivanhoe Library & Cultural Hub
23 April - 23 May 2021

Paradoxa Collective comprises four Australian contemporary artists: Penelope Aitken, Anna Farago, Siri Hayes and Susan Wirth. Based in the outer north east of Melbourne, they share an interest in peri-urban landscapes, connecting to the land through practical restoration and regeneration activities combined with site-informed art making.

In this exhibition, Paradoxa Collective artists explore personal and broader connections and complexities regarding relationships with the natural environment. They are 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’.

Soft Paintings (Bunjil Reserve and beyond) considers ecosystems of place, community and family. Broadly, I consider the fragile state of the world: environmentally, socially, politically and economically. The abstract compositions are suggestive of and made of interdependence. Specifically, I am informed by Bunjil Reserve as a site of personal refuge but also of conversation, restoration activities, and a place layered with history and waves of change. Bark, leaves and rusty iron from the Reserve were used to dye fabric. These are sewn together with my late husbands clothes, and scraps of silk from my Mum’s wedding dress, made from a sari she purchased as a young woman on an adventure across India in the 1950s. These materials, with their separate connections, cross time and place.

In Mapping Meditation II I am seated on a large textile patchwork I made with fabric dyed with stuff from Bunjil Reserve and my husband, Adrian’s worn clothing. I sit within one of the three seating circles, soaking up the essence of the bush, within the confines of the seats designed in consultation with the Wurundjeri. My posture suggests the seeking of guidance, the colour of my jumper also radiates a sunny warmth. It was the last handknit my mother made me before the effects of dementia made it impossible for her to knit anymore.

For more information about Paradoxa Collective: https://www.paradoxacollective.net

Paradoxa activities take place on the unceded sacred sovereign country of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and we respect their elders past, present and future.