OCTOBER 13, 2011 - NOVEMBER 5, 2011
Artist Statement:
My work has always been about an intimate and personal experience of particular landscapes where I have spent time. These are often remote and isolated places that are relatively free of the presence of human beings: Antarctica, Macquarie Island, Maatsuyker Island and most recently, Tasman Island. These are all places where the weather and the wildlife dominate and where the balance and order is still in favour of the natural world rather than the human world.
Tasman Island is a wild and rugged uninhabited island off the SE coast of Tasmania. It bears the brunt of the weather blowing up from the Southern Ocean as well as from the Tasman to the East. It is a place that is spectacular, because of the steep high cliffs that surround the island and exposed because the original vegetation that covered the island has mostly been removed from several generations of lighthouse keepers. The dominant vegetation remaining on the island is a mix of grasses, both native and pasture escapees which grow up to a metre high densely covering about 70% of the island. To me the grasses are interesting both culturally and aesthetically. They are often disregarded or seen as insignificant in the ecological scheme of things, and yet they harbour a vast biodiversity and the mixture of indigenous and non-indigenous species growing tangled together and competing for space strangely echoes the bigger world.
The chaotic natural weaving of the grasses reflects the way they are shaped by the wind and weather, which can be quite extreme at times. – Sue Lovegrove