• Cape Schanck

    Cape Schanck (1978)

    John DAVIS

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    Notes

    John Davis was a pioneering Australian artist who during his life achieved a critically acclaimed international reputation as a sculptor and installation artist. At the core of his practice, particularly evident in his late works, was an awareness of ecology and sensitivity to the elemental forces of nature and the effect of human actions.

    Cape Schanck 1978 is not an illustration or reaction to the area. It received its title from the four rocks placed on the green canvas, which originally came from Cape Schanck. The form of the work was influenced by temples that Davis had seen in India, while other elements and materials relate to the formal qualities of sculptures by contemporary artists such as Robert Morris and Joseph Beuys with which Davis was familiar.

  • Inland sea

    Inland sea (1986)

    Rosalie GASCOIGNE

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    Notes

    The art of Rosalie Gascoigne has a unique place in the rich landscape tradition in Australian art. While painting has been the dominant art form in this tradition, Gascoigne worked in assemblage and installation, using natural and man-made materials collected from the landscape. Her works capture the essence of the landscape’s topography, space, air and vegetation, and the daily and seasonal natural rhythms of nature in compositions that are often startling in their refined simplicity.

    Inland sea comprises 16 pieces of weathered, painted corrugated iron set at various heights on wire bases. Their fragmented and irregular shapes evoke the contracting mud surface of an inland lake in the Australian outback.

  • Sparkling dew-covered branch

    Sparkling dew-covered branch (1998)

    Louise WEAVER

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    Notes

    Louise Weaver’s works invite us to consider distinctions between the natural and the artificial, the beautiful and the uncanny. Since the mid 1990s she has methodically encased objects within hand-crocheted carapaces, transforming animals, botanical specimens and domestic objects into seductive imaginary forms. These works draw on a vast range of personal, art-historical, scientific, popular and material sources. Collectively, they suggest a fantastical world of evolving hybrid forms.

    This work consists of a multi-forked Plane tree branch that has been covered in a layer of hand-crocheted synthetic thread so that it resembles a branch that has been covered in frost, ice or dew. A single chandelier light bulb dangles from the end of one branch.

Collection Stories

Landscape and environment

The forms of nature

Artists are not confined to literal representations of the landscape. Sometimes they use the features of the landscape and nature to create new and unexpected forms and images. In such works, familiar elements – a piece of weathered corrugated iron, a fallen branch – take on a new role.

  • Elemental forces of nature

    At the core of John Davis’s art practice is an awareness of ecology and a sensitivity to the elemental forces of nature and the effects of human interactions.9

    Davis’s work, including Cape Schanck 1978, also reflects an engagement with other ideas and influences. This work is not an illustration or reaction to Cape Schanck; its title comes from the four rocks placed on the green canvas, which came from the area.10

    The form of the work is influenced by temples that Davis saw in India, while other elements and materials relate to the formal qualities of sculptures by contemporary artists such as Robert Morris and Joseph Beuys, with which Davis was familiar.

  • Poetics of space

    The art of Rosalie Gascoigne has a unique place in the rich landscape tradition in Australian art. While painting has been the dominant art form in this tradition, Gascoigne has worked in assemblage and installation, using natural and man-made materials collected from the landscape.

    Gascoigne’s art captures the essence of the landscape and the daily and seasonal natural rhythms of nature. While some of her works are linked to particular locations, her art transcends the specifics of place and time to convey moods, feelings or sensations of the landscape inspired by memory and experience.11

    Inland sea 1986 consists of 16 pieces of weathered, painted corrugated iron set at various heights on wire bases. Their fragmented and irregular shapes evoke the contracting mud surface of an inland lake in the Australian outback. It’s a beautiful, poetic work that offers us a refreshingly inventive way of looking at the landscape.

  • Fantastical objects

    Since the mid 1990s, Louise Weaver has methodically encased objects within hand-woven carapaces, transforming and combining tree-branches, household items and invented forms into panoramas of a seductive, disturbing world gone awry. Her works draw on a vast range of personal, art-historical, scientific, popular and material sources, and the aesthetic ideals of other cultures, from mythology to Chanel.

    Sparkling dew-covered branch 1998 is made from a multi-forked Plane tree branch that has been covered in a layer of hand-crocheted synthetic thread so that it resembles a frost-covered branch dripping with ice and dew. A single chandelier light bulb dangles from the end of one branch. The work invites us to consider distinctions between the natural and the artificial, the beautiful and the uncanny.

Endnotes