An exhibition by SAC Resident Artist Grace Garton.
My first impression of the grasslands was of an uninviting, dry, treeless and windy place. As the years went by I began to understand and appreciate this unusual habitat, as it revealed an abundance of tiny, delicate, wildflowers, lichens and grasses.
This exhibition is a series of little events that left an enduring impression on the artist while care taking a small area of land located in the lower midlands. The series will include both mixed medium paintings and soft sculpture and tell a story about the everyday, and personal experience living in and the surrounding midlands.
“My partner and I looked after a small house in the middle of 5 acres in the lower midlands for 5 years. With distant neighbors and a native grass and wild flower reserve next door and below the property flows the Jordan river.
We lived as sustainable as we could growing our own vegetables, keeping chooks for eggs, looking after injured and dumped animals and doing our best to eradicate the gorse and blackberry, storksbill and other weeds.
I was amazed at the colour diversity of the flowers and grasses, the tiny purple Vanilla Lilies and the violet and white Early Nancy’s to the stricking Kangaroo grass, when young these grasses are a fresh light green with burgundy tips, as they age the colours turn to hues of light gold and cream, bronze and copper, eventually turning gray. It was beautiful to see the cycle of the wild flowers from season the season and how even in the bleakest of winters there was always something interesting going on.
Our garden and orchard brought in all types of bird life, native and introduced animals. Pademelons, hares and eastern bared bandicootes, Tasmanian devils, blue tongue lizards, echidnas and wombats all ventured past our front door.
Sadly many animals died on the road that separated our block.
Feral dogs and cats also played havoc on our land as well as housing development, and a devastating deliberately lit grass fire that burnt so fiercely and destroyed many endangered lichens that will take years to recover.
But this is not an exhibition about loss it is about the beauty of small things, how nature repairs and to enlighten the viewer to the delicate balance of these rare and endangered habitats.
I hope the viewer will explore these habitats and take note of these little things and see that they have their worth in the bigger picture.”
– Grace Garton
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EXHIBITION DATES:
Friday 3 – Friday 31 August 2018
9:00am – 5:00pm weekdays
10:00am – 3:30pm weekends
DEMONSTRATION:
Saturday 4 August 2018 @ 11:00am
Demonstration on mixed media painting
Image Credits: Grace Garton