Bundanon
The exhibition Bundanon presented new works made as a result of a joint residency undertaken by Vicki Mason and Alice Whish in May 2018 at Bundanon in NSW. Bundanon, once the property of artist Arthur Boyd (who donated it to the Australian people), is characterised by its rural setting on the Shoalhaven river.
Vick presented work that taps into the idea of maintaining plant literacy and story-telling through presenting work from her project, People, plants, place: worn connections. This participatory project undertaken while in residence came about due to Vicki being overwhelmed by the richness of the flora of the property and so wanting to ask for help in finding her way into the plant communities with the help of the Bundanon staff that live and work in the area. Vicki connected with three Bundanon staff who each chose a specific plant that resonated with them. These plants were a starting point for new works. The three chose trees, (Pararchidendron pruinosum (common name Snow Wood), Magnolia grandiflora (common name Southern Magnolia) and Eucalyptus punctata (common name Grey Gum). The resulting jewellery is based on their seeds and flowers are embedded with ideas of the jewel as memento, an object that brings the past into the present - in the future. They capture the importance of remembering and meaningfulness as a key function of jewellery. These jewels hold the connections that gave rise to them (from participant to Vicki) along with the plant names they keep alive. They also have the potential to forge new connections as they make their way out into the world after the exhibition is over.
Mason also presented a series titled Forget-me-Not necklaces. These necklaces are a riff on what many of us know as the Carrie necklace or Nameplate necklace. She discovered that plant literacy is declining in the wider world and in an attempt to raise awareness about this contemporary problem she created a series of nameplate necklaces based on the many weird and wonderful names plants are given. In schools and universities plant identification and botanical education is increasingly neglected. The Junior Oxford Dictionary which removed many plant words from its 2012 edition such as acorn, fern, violet and willow was roundly criticised by international writers and thinkers who pointed out that we can’t care for what we don’t know.
This series talks to ideas around plants not merely being viewed as decorative background fuzz in our lives but as essential to our lives. In neglecting to nurture plant knowledge and the naming of plants we reveal we are not paying attention. Naming confers respect and recognition and if we can’t name our plants, we risk their loss.
