VIEW CATALOGUE HERE.
Bob Brown Foundation presents ‘Art for Takayna’
Group Show
13.09.24 - 24.09.24
Art for Takayna is a powerful exhibition showcasing artworks inspired by the ancient forests, mountains, and coastline of Takayna / Tarkine in Tasmania’s northwest. Located just several hundred kilometers across the Bass Strait from Naarm / Melbourne, Takayna is Australia’s largest temperate rainforest. Despite its global significance, the ancient forests of Takayna face threats from mining and logging.
Bob Brown Foundation is at the forefront of the campaign to protect Takayna as a World Heritage-listed National Park returned to Aboriginal ownership. Our efforts combine direct action, science, and powerful legal interventions. The artworks featured in this exhibition are a call-to-action, reminding us of what is at stake. Come along to experience the majesty of Takayna and help us defend it.
Bob Brown Foundation takes Action for Earth to protect scenic land environments, wildlife and marine ecosystems in Tasmania, around Australia, in Antarctica and across our region.
More info at https://bobbrown.org.au/
To donate give.bobbrown.org.au
Opening night photography courtesy of Mark Owen.
Art for Takayna is curated by Margherita Mezzasoma and features work from:
| David Aldous
Weighted lines is an archival approach to documenting the natural life of fallen trees all over the world. As a relief printer I create limited edition pressings of magnificent trees, created out on the land from which they lived. Using only hand tools to minimise my impact, I spend up to a week in its habitat to understand its life a little better and to pay respect to the environment. My belief around everything we do should be to improve our surroundings, for every work sold 10 native trees are planted to help reforest that region, 10% is also donated to First Nations groups as a way to pay the rent for being on land that was never ceded. Lou-Anne Barker |
Plum Birdy
Plum Birdy is a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in lutruwita, Tasmania. Her work delves into inner worlds and the human condition, though often through the guise of animals and non-human characters. She expresses her ideas through paint, digital design, writing and mural art. With a BFA and Teaching degrees from University of Tasmania, and a qualification in design, Plum Birdy has worked both in Tasmania and overseas. To get in touch for projects, collaborations or just to say hi, please email jo.plumbirdy@gmail.com Instagram.com/plumbirdy facebook.com/plumbirdy
Rob Blakers
Rob Blakers has worked as a landscape photographer for upwards of 40 years, primarily using photography to represent wild places for conservation. At this time of escalating global climate and biodiversity crises his interest lies in bringing the best of experience and technology to make a positive difference for the planet.
David Booth
David, who also works under the pseudonym Ghostpatrol, is a Hobart-born, Naarm-based artist whose practice shifts between studio works, site specific installations, commissioned murals and commercial design. His work has been exhibited at and acquired by several leading institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Museum and Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra.
Kagetsu Buic
Kagetsu Buic is an Australian fine-art nature/adventure photographer residing in Melbourne, Australia. His photographic works represent his passion for natural interactions, and the solitude of natural environments, while holding his core values of environmental conservation, and the protection of wildlife.
Anne Conron
Anne Conron is an artist who works in a number of mediums, including printmaking, ceramics and photography. She lives in north west Tasmania and Melbourne. Throughout her life she has had an interest in the natural world and this is reflected in the subject matter she has chosen to explore in her artwork. She has been doing lino prints which focus on the environment of north west Tasmania since completing a Masters of Fine Arts in 2007. Much of her inspiration comes from encounters with wildlife in the Tarkine. Several of her lino prints have been used by the BobBrown Foundation on their merchandise.
Tim Cooper
Tim is a stills photographer and picture framer originating and now based on the northwest coast of Lutruwita/Tasmania. His photographic interest was inherited through the generations, his practice now has a primary focus of environmental conservation through wilderness, wildlife and activism imagery. In 2016, Tim was invited to participate in the collaborative environmental art project ‘Tarkine in Motion’ by the Bob Brown Foundation, since then Takayna/Tarkine has been the centre point and inspiration for his photography. This body of work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, publications and presentations locally and interstate. His work can be found at tcooperphoto.com @timcooper_photo
| Grant Dixon Grant Dixon is a photographer whose work encompasses landscapes, abstract patterns in nature, wildlife, travel and adventure subjects. He was born and still lives in Tasmania, Australia's island state. He trained as an earth scientist and worked professionally in nature conservation for several decades. Grant has been exploring Tasmania's uniquely wild and wonderful landscape for some fifty years, usually with camera never far from hand. | |
Neha Gupte |
Bev Graham
Born in Melbourne, Bev's botanical watercolours are represented in major collections both in Australia and overseas. Early fabric designs and materials are in decorative arts collections at Canberra's National Gallery and Melbourne's RMIT. Franklin Mint reproduced Bev's "Australian Bouquet" for their 2001 Federation Plate. Your Garden magazine has published 18 of her watercolours, and 25 limited edition prints have been published.
Fiona Haasz
I like dancing probably more than making things. But it's all a dance really isn't it? Life? The poetic enchants me. And the feeling of being in sync with my Soul. It seems that creating is a 'becoming who we are meant to be' or an 'expression of who we really are'. Artwork is somewhat intimate in that sense, if it's 'real', as it opens a window into an inner world, which we, humans, tend to keep to ourselves. So, welcome! To one facet of my inner world as it connects with the most magical place I've ever been to on earth: takayna. Every time I visit, I am healed on many deep layers and uplifted by not just the forest but also the gathering of 'my kind of artists' and extraordinary volunteers and staff of the Bob Brown Foundation. I cannot express the immensity of my gratitude for how well they have prevented the precious old trees and their habitat from being destroyed, over and over again.
Karen Marie Keefe
Karen Keefe is an American-Australian photographer, midwife, and activist, born and raised in Northern California, USA, and is currently based in the township of Penguin, along the Northwest Coast of Lutruwita / Tasmania. Karen engages in nature, wilderness, landscape, and birth photography, with an emphasis on documenting conservation, activism, cultural landscapes, forests, waterways, and wildlife. She is drawn also to macro and natural abstract work. Karen aims to portray her intimate connection with nature and the importance of protecting areas of high conservation value and cultural significance by capturing still images through the photographic lens. A significant portion of her work is based in Takayna / Tarkine. Karen has exhibited her photographic work and presented from Bruny Island to Wynyard in Tasmania. “I have been continually drawn to return to, spend time in, and share via photography, this very beautiful and culturally significant region. Spending time in Takayna, rich with Gondwanan rainforests and coastal cultural landscapes threatened by destruction, I have met and have been very moved and inspired by activists and conservationists of all ages and professions who have joined the fight to protect Takayna from further exploitation and destruction. May all that still stands intact in and throughout Takayna be protected forever.” – Karen Marie Keefe
Ellequa Martin
Ellequa is a an artist and environmental activist from Naarm. She makes works using a variety of materials such as painting, ceramics, drawing, sculpture, installation and printmaking. Responding to topical issues involving Earths natural environment and the resulting collisions with human made constructs, is a concurrent theme in her practice.
Jess Murray
Jess Murray is a Tasmanian filmmaker and illustrator with a focus on whacky characters and heartfelt comedies. After graduating from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School with a BA in Screen Production in 2020, Jess co-founded the production company Turbo Chook. Turbo Chook is dedicated to telling absurdist comedies through a queer lens. The team has had the privilege of working with numerous Australian comedians, including: Luke McGregor, Michelle Brasier, Dylan Hesp and Nina Oyama. Outside of the film industry, Jess’ art has been featured in various exhibitions over the last ten years, including: Art on Victoria: Epoch, Tas Pride’s Out of Darkness, and DARK MOFO’s Stories After Dark.
Federica Pelizzari
Federica Pelizzari is an Italian artist. She graduated from the Art College in Italy in 2006. She visualises her art through meditation which spiritually immerses her into the four elements of Mother Earth: Earth, Water, Sun, Nature. The expression of these four elements and the respect for natural sources makes her art more prominent and alive. In love with the Australian Landscape from which the inspiration comes, she uses natural materials such as Terracotta Clay and Raffia. The perfect and imperfect forms and details make Federica Pelizzari art organic and unique.
Bella Shaw
Bella is a multidisciplinary artist, archaeologist and science educator who grew up among the stringybark forests of Peramangk Country, South Australia. Bella’s diverse work includes watercolour painting, illustration, technical drawing, and occasional glassblowing. With a passion for blending art and science, her scientific illustration is featured in the Museum of the Riverina and her curation of ‘Unearthed: Art in Archaeology and Anthropology’ saw an exploration of creative talent within the Australian National University community. Takayna is a place that deeply inspires this fusing of art and science, and through her work, Bella hopes to capture the deep and ancient aliveness of this magical ecosystem.
Kelly Marie Slater
A lens-based artist, with a deep interest and concern for the environment, both the wild places and the cultivated areas. Kelly Marie’s work often reflects humans to the environment: individually and as societies. Since becoming involved with the Bob Brown Foundation in 2017, Kelly Marie returned to photograph many the aspects of takayna’s natural diversity and the campaigns to protect it.
Kieran Sullivan
Multi-media artist hailing from Hobart, based in Naarm.
Daniella Conser
CLIMARTE and ClimActs are the driving forces behind Forest Guardians: The Last Stand, a piece that brings together art and activism to highlight the urgent issue of deforestation. ClimActs, the producer of the Climate Guardians, provided the narrative for this piece, focusing on their ongoing environmental activism and the symbolic role they play in advocating for environmental protection. CLIMARTE unites artists, scientists, and activists to address the climate emergency. Through exhibitions like FOREST: The Last Stand, they use art to inform and mobilize communities in defence of the environment.
Daniella Conser, a collaborator with CLIMARTE and a creative environmental communicator and educator with a background in conservation and earth sciences, curated the piece. She developed the concept, edited the image and incorporated the mixed medium elements. Julian Meehan, an acclaimed Australian photographer, documented the Climate Guardians' action in Toolangi State Forest, capturing the emotional and ecological weight of their activism through striking visuals.