Above the Canopy Exhibition Tour 2022

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Posted 2022-06-15 by Jen ⇒ follow

Sat 09 Jul 2022 - Sat 24 Sep 2022

Above the Canopy is a major exhibition hosted by Boroondara Arts at the Town Hall Gallery , 360 Burwood Road, Hawthorn from Sat 9 July to Sat 24 September 2022. It celebrates the richness and diverse beauty of Australia's natural environment and features artwork by Sarah Hendy, Janet Laurence, Michael McHugh, Rebecca Mayo, Catherine Nelson, Grant Stevens and Judy Watson. These artists have drawn from nature's endless inspiration and captured its beauty while documenting changing weather patterns and commenting on unsustainable human practices.

There's a deeper message beneath the celebration of nature's unimaginable grandeur as it explores concerns for climate action and the need to protect our planet for future generations. Artists featured, work with installation, photography, painting, animation and textiles, creating a theatrical, immersive and regenerative experience that highlights the significance of Country and our need to care for it. Listed below are related events. You'll find full details via the links given.

Sat 9 July from 11am-12pm - Exhibition tour for families $10. This event is geared towards families with curious kids aged 5 to 12 yers of age. You'll be guided by a gallery curator who'll encourage you to explore the exhibition and learn about the artworks on display.

Wed 31 Aug from 12-pm - Above The Canopy Exhibition Tour - Free event, bookings essential.

Sarah Hendy - a multidisciplinary artist based in Victoria, her featured work 'Waiting For Daybreak' (2018) delves into a near-death experience she had in one of the most beautiful parts of Australia after nearly drowning in the Northern Rivers region of NSW as a result of ex-tropical Cyclone Debbie. It is characterised by verdant and luxurious plant growth, with delicate ferns growing within a crowded landscape of giant stinging trees, figs, booyongs and flame trees.

Janet Laurence - examines our physical, cultural and conflicting relationship to the natural world through site-specific gallery and museum works. Laurence creates immersive environments that navigate the interconnections between life and the world. Her installation 'Breath of the Forest' (2020) features 11 suspended silk veils overlaid with images of animals and trees, including old growth forests in Tasmania. This work embodies the transience and fragility of natural habitats.

Michael McHugh - has collected a wide range of photographs and drawings during research trips to museums, libraries and gardens around the world. In his studio, his collages lead to large format paintings. For Above the Canopy, he has created a large-scale painting Swimming in the Clouds (2022) which asks what new hybrid organic forms will evolve from climate change, when plant forms are washed away and land is engulfed by saltwater intrusion that includes complex sea life microcosms. It's his largest painting to date and stretches 6 meres long. Lush with colour and nature, it's there to bring you joy and for a moment, to forget all else going on in your lives.

Rebecca Mayo - a lecturer at the School of Art & Design, Australian National University, Mayo principally examines relations and interactions between urban ecologically significant sites and people. Referencing Charles Darwin's 1881 book The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms and contemplating the agency of non-human life, Mayo's featured work At Work With Worms (2020), a compost/composite of Darwin's laser-etched text, her human tending, and the worms' business of eating. Mayo explains, "Working with the thousands of worms contained in the farm, my making slowed to their rhythm. Etched in Canberra and left for a week with the worms, the book pages took up the worms' appetite which in turn paced with the climate inside their home."

Catherine Nelson - uses digital technology as her paintbrush to create lush, hyperreal landscape 'paintings' and animations. After completing her art education in painting at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney, Catherine created visual effects for films such as Moulin Rouge, Harry Potter, 300 and Australia. Nature is the primary inspiration for her art; she uses collage techniques in the computer to shift photos from 'reality' into imagined worlds of her devising.

Grant Stevens - explores the various ways that digital technologies and conventions of representation mediate our inner worlds and social realities. Drawing on the visual languages of video games and the wellness industry, his featured work, The Forest (2020) is an endless panoramic experience of an immersive, idealised computer-generated forest with sound. Created with procedurally generated computer graphics homogenised through algorithms, it is simultaneously an homage to the natural environment and a satire of wellbeing initiatives and their claims to rejuvenation.

Judy Watson - her Aboriginal matrilineal family is from Waanyi country in north-west Queensland. Spanning painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture and video, her practice often draws on archival documents and materials, such as maps, letters, and police reports, to unveil institutionalised discrimination against Aboriginal people. Watson's two paintings on display incorporate systems for measuring Australia's median temperature and fire danger, the latter a familiar sight on regional road networks. She contrasts an ember red-orange work with the stark silhouette of a denuded tree depicted at its centre with a more hopeful, vibrant green work referencing regrowth on K'gari (Fraser Island) after the devastating 2020 bushfires.

This exhibition has brought together artists from diverse walks of life. Through hyperreal images of lush and verdant forests alongside detailed studies of insects, botany, birds and geology, Above the Canopy shows a deep appreciation for our majestic and awe-inspiring world.

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#community_events
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#july
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!date 09/07/2022 -- 24/09/2022
%wnmelbourne

179587 - 2023-06-15 22:23:49