Exhibition Review: Sharon McKenzie BA (Fine Arts)
Visible Science
Donna Davis launched her travelling exhibition Unseen at the Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens Richard Randall studio during World Science Festival week: 22 to 26 March 2017. We might be reminded that Jean Cocteau said that “art is science made clear” (1918), although saying art makes science visible is probably more accurate in this case.
Unseen contributes to the debate around what art can be. Davis takes an interdisciplinary approach that is indicative of contemporary artists working with the environment. Davis links the works visually to the historical symbolism of science, education, the museum and most importantly to verifiable evidence of the institution. The artist creates an installation that is both thought provoking and fun.
The work is the culmination of 52 weeks spent in the Purga Forest Reserve, home of the endangered Swamp Tea Tree. One day per week, the artist acted as collector, finding and documenting 66 fungi species in collaboration with Mycologist Nigel Fechner as part of her artist residency with the Queensland Herbarium. The investigation uncovered the relationship between the hyphae (the fungi is the fruiting body) and the trees, an often unseen (hence the title) symbiotic relationship that benefits both species. It’s an interesting data visualisation that results; artwork about a collaboration between trees and fungi resulting from a collaboration between people.
The scientific aspects are exhibited through public programs including two open days at the Herbarium (a first for Brisbane Botanic Gardens). This collaboration not only raises awareness of the landscape and ecosystem but also the work of the Qld Herbarium. The handout for the exhibition offers further insight including a scientific essay by Fechner and an additional interpretive essay by curator and environmentalist Beth Jackson.
Davis has a history of working within the scope of data visualisation. This contemporary art practice has origins in early scientific illustrations but has flourished in the “information age” (Milliss, 2017). The history of botanical illustration and scientific classification are referenced in works such as Collection series pigment print(s) (2017). These glossy chiaroscuro style digital photographs, displayed inside herbarium specimen boxes depict the fungi and their associations (soil, wood or glass for symbiotic). The upper part of the image contains faded grey copperplate writing, with traditional Latin names and descriptors like those found on historical scientific illustrations and colonial herbarium documents. All this serves to engage the audience in learning about this rarely seen landscape and the display format emphasises the precious, jewel-like quality of the specimens.
Davis employs recycled materials in her interactive works to further emphasise the relationship between people and the environment. Intertwined, 2017 uses pedal power to light the hyphae revealing the connection between the fungi and tree. The work is reminiscent of science fair displays and evokes a sense of the imaginative role museums have played in science. In this work, the machine is used as a metaphor for human interaction with an ecology and to represent the “work” that goes into maintaining an ecology.
In Sporulation, 2017 the artist again adopts the role of educator playing on the ideas of exploration, discovery and the unseen, by creating enlarged spore shapes (from recycled material) of various fungi, that appear to hang in space. The audience is instructed to view the yellow tags hanging from each “spore” with the blue light torches provided. The light reveals a small drawing identifying the species from which the spore has originated. This enables the audience to act out aspects of the artist’s own discoveries.
The use of textured recycled materials contrasts sharply with the use of materials such as silk. In Un-truncated, digital prints on chiffon (2017) the artist uses 2-metre-tall thin silk tubes printed with enlarged gills of various fungi to represent trees. The tiled pattern features symmetrical repeats. As with the other interactive pieces we are invited to touch the “trees” which gives a sensation like that of touching actual fungi gills. This installation hangs from the ceiling to just above the surface of the floor which causes them to shift slightly in the breeze evoking the movement of trees in a forest, albeit a small one.
This exhibition is educational and fun with appeal serving a diverse age group. Subtly using art as a political force through education to raise awareness, Davis’s work reveals our own precarious position using fungi’s reliance on the trees as an allegory for our own dependence on the environment for survival.
Unseen is currently touring Queensland.
Cocteau, J. 1918 Le coq et l’arlequin. France: Editions de la Sirene
Davis, D. http://donnadavisartist.weebly.com/unseen.html> 9/4/17
Milliss, I. 2017 “Editorial”, Artlink. Issue 37:1 Adelaide, Australia: Newcastle Printing. Pp 6-10
Visible Science
Donna Davis launched her travelling exhibition Unseen at the Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens Richard Randall studio during World Science Festival week: 22 to 26 March 2017. We might be reminded that Jean Cocteau said that “art is science made clear” (1918), although saying art makes science visible is probably more accurate in this case.
Unseen contributes to the debate around what art can be. Davis takes an interdisciplinary approach that is indicative of contemporary artists working with the environment. Davis links the works visually to the historical symbolism of science, education, the museum and most importantly to verifiable evidence of the institution. The artist creates an installation that is both thought provoking and fun.
The work is the culmination of 52 weeks spent in the Purga Forest Reserve, home of the endangered Swamp Tea Tree. One day per week, the artist acted as collector, finding and documenting 66 fungi species in collaboration with Mycologist Nigel Fechner as part of her artist residency with the Queensland Herbarium. The investigation uncovered the relationship between the hyphae (the fungi is the fruiting body) and the trees, an often unseen (hence the title) symbiotic relationship that benefits both species. It’s an interesting data visualisation that results; artwork about a collaboration between trees and fungi resulting from a collaboration between people.
The scientific aspects are exhibited through public programs including two open days at the Herbarium (a first for Brisbane Botanic Gardens). This collaboration not only raises awareness of the landscape and ecosystem but also the work of the Qld Herbarium. The handout for the exhibition offers further insight including a scientific essay by Fechner and an additional interpretive essay by curator and environmentalist Beth Jackson.
Davis has a history of working within the scope of data visualisation. This contemporary art practice has origins in early scientific illustrations but has flourished in the “information age” (Milliss, 2017). The history of botanical illustration and scientific classification are referenced in works such as Collection series pigment print(s) (2017). These glossy chiaroscuro style digital photographs, displayed inside herbarium specimen boxes depict the fungi and their associations (soil, wood or glass for symbiotic). The upper part of the image contains faded grey copperplate writing, with traditional Latin names and descriptors like those found on historical scientific illustrations and colonial herbarium documents. All this serves to engage the audience in learning about this rarely seen landscape and the display format emphasises the precious, jewel-like quality of the specimens.
Davis employs recycled materials in her interactive works to further emphasise the relationship between people and the environment. Intertwined, 2017 uses pedal power to light the hyphae revealing the connection between the fungi and tree. The work is reminiscent of science fair displays and evokes a sense of the imaginative role museums have played in science. In this work, the machine is used as a metaphor for human interaction with an ecology and to represent the “work” that goes into maintaining an ecology.
In Sporulation, 2017 the artist again adopts the role of educator playing on the ideas of exploration, discovery and the unseen, by creating enlarged spore shapes (from recycled material) of various fungi, that appear to hang in space. The audience is instructed to view the yellow tags hanging from each “spore” with the blue light torches provided. The light reveals a small drawing identifying the species from which the spore has originated. This enables the audience to act out aspects of the artist’s own discoveries.
The use of textured recycled materials contrasts sharply with the use of materials such as silk. In Un-truncated, digital prints on chiffon (2017) the artist uses 2-metre-tall thin silk tubes printed with enlarged gills of various fungi to represent trees. The tiled pattern features symmetrical repeats. As with the other interactive pieces we are invited to touch the “trees” which gives a sensation like that of touching actual fungi gills. This installation hangs from the ceiling to just above the surface of the floor which causes them to shift slightly in the breeze evoking the movement of trees in a forest, albeit a small one.
This exhibition is educational and fun with appeal serving a diverse age group. Subtly using art as a political force through education to raise awareness, Davis’s work reveals our own precarious position using fungi’s reliance on the trees as an allegory for our own dependence on the environment for survival.
Unseen is currently touring Queensland.
Cocteau, J. 1918 Le coq et l’arlequin. France: Editions de la Sirene
Davis, D. http://donnadavisartist.weebly.com/unseen.html> 9/4/17
Milliss, I. 2017 “Editorial”, Artlink. Issue 37:1 Adelaide, Australia: Newcastle Printing. Pp 6-10