Botan­i­ca: view art as nature intended

Image © Ker­rie Poli­ness, Field Draw­ing #1, cour­tesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery. Some­thing trans­for­ma­tive is hap­pen­ing to Brisbane’s City Botan­ic Gar­dens this autumn – an open air gallery and exhi­bi­tion fea­tur­ing par­tic­i­pa­to­ry art­works, dra­mat­ic pro­jec­tions, inter­ac­tive instal­la­tions and more. Botan­i­ca, large-scale out­door art exhi­bi­tion, is part of the broad­er cul­tur­al pro­gram cre­at­ed around the Gold Coast 2018 Com­mon­wealth Games. Open­ing on 6 April and clos­ing on 15 April, the exhi­bi­tion over­lays con­tem­po­rary think­ing with the gar­dens’ famil­iar land­scapes. Pre­sent­ed by Fes­ti­val 2018, pro­duced by Bris­bane City Coun­cil, and sup­port­ed by the Queens­land Gov­ern­ment, Botan­i­ca fea­tures 16 nation­al and local con­tem­po­rary artists, each of whom has respond­ed to an area of the gar­dens from which they take inspi­ra­tion. This mon­u­men­tal endeav­or will bring mod­ern art to life in a time­less set­ting, allow­ing audi­ences to con­nect with nature and invit­ing them to inter­act with and com­ment on the art works.

EXPLORE AND CON­NECT WITH BRISBANE’S CITY BOTAN­IC GARDENS

Image Artist Ker­rie Poli­ness. Supplied. A tem­po­rary art­work, Field Draw­ing num­ber #1 is con­struct­ed from geo­met­ric lines on grass made using a sports line mark­ing machine. The pub­lic is invit­ed to view artist Ker­rie Poli­ness as she draws the large-scale art­work between 1 – 3pm on Wednes­day 4 April on Sound­shell Hill in Brisbane’s Botan­ic gar­dens. ​‘The work is a set of instruc­tions that describe how to make the draw­ing. The instruc­tions have been designed to be used by peo­ple oth­er than myself; park care­tak­ers, gar­den­ers – any­body who is inter­est­ed, real­ly,’ Poli­ness said. Poli­ness explained that the geom­e­try of the work is such that there is a pat­tern involved, but no mea­sur­ing. ​‘So every time the work is made it changes in scale and ori­en­ta­tion depend­ing on the site and that is deter­mined by the peo­ple that make it. It also changes in terms of its inter­nal dynam­ics because the peo­ple who are mak­ing it decide how to steer it and can change not the pat­tern but the dynam­ics of the geom­e­try. As the work is made, it ​‘describes a process of things that inter­con­nect – things that are sup­pos­ed­ly nat­ur­al and things that are sup­pos­ed­ly unnat­ur­al,’ Poli­ness said. 

Arti­cle link: here