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| May 15 –
31, 2008
Magnet House
Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne
Melbourne, VIC
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Plein Air began its life as the Open
Office project in early 2007 when it
was awarded a Next Wave Kickstart grant. It was
then developed into a residency and exhibition
that took place as part of the 2008
Next Wave Festival.
The exhibition took the form of a living installation
with elements of sculpture, drawing, printmaking
and performance, located in and around the Old
Observatory’s Magnet House - a tiny heritage
building on the edge of the Royal Botanic Gardens
Melbourne.
Originally used to store instruments for measuring
changes in the earth’s magnetic field, Magnet
House was temporarily transformed into a hybrid
exhibition space and mobile artists’ studio,
open to the interactions and contributions of
the visiting public. From this base we made regular
expeditions into the Gardens, taking components
of our roaming studio with us to investigate its
shifting landscape (from swampy marshland to carefully
manicured pleasure ground) and the tangled colonial
histories of its plants.
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En Plein
Air
2008
Suitcases, golf
buggy frame, parasol, rug, cushions, etching press, solar
plates, racquet stretching frame, glass, ink, watercolours,
paper, map, books, folding tables, desktop, trestle legs,
train guard’s lamp, solar-powered radio, flight
computers, ladies' portable compass, thermos, library
filing cabinet and trays, glass bottles, telescope, projector
tripod, lamps, plants, boxes, various found objects, dried
plant specimens, Wardian case
Dimensions variable
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continued to work on-site throughout the exhibition, adding
to a growing archive of works on paper that combined scientific
illustration, watercolour, solar etching and fragments of
transcribed historical research. These works were archived
in a dismembered library filing cabinet that visitors could
look through over a cup of tea.
Our research was particularly concerned with the movement
of plants across the globe in the early 19th Century, and
how these lines of movement intersected at the Gardens.
Infiltrating the ‘working’ installation was
a fugitive Wardian Case, the first portable greenhouse that
enabled the successful transmission of living plants from
one colony to another and to and from the seat of Empire.
This and other hijacked archaic objects around the room
performed genuine functional roles, as well as provoking
conversations that leapt nimbly from botanical science,
early colonial navigation and dispossession and discovery,
to the place of contemporary art practice in this slippery
space.
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This project was supported by Next Wave, Arts Victoria, City
of Melbourne, Arts NSW, the Sidney Myer Fund and Royal Botanic
Gardens Melbourne. |
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The studio staying close to home, on Observatory
Lawn (just outside Magnet House)
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The installation
occupying Magnet House |
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Unidentified
grass species planted in train guard's lamp, with Unexplored
watercolour & solar etching on paper; on library filing
cabinet |
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| Wardian Case,
portable kitchen & portable studio |
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Filing trays
on suitcase 'coffee-tables' |
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The great
Screw Pine in the Palm Stove
2008
Solar etching & watercolour on paper, in filing
tray
13 x 15 cm
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Portable studio
(detail) on Hopetoun Lawn |
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Travelling
botanical reference library,
making itself at home |
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Tessa's (indoor)
botanical illustration desk |
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Makeshift
portable office furniture |
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Keg, Texta
and Mickie Quick perusing the archives |
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A Gardens
visitor inspecting the works on paper |
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