GEO: Art of the Collection

GEO Art of the Collection ANU School of Art & Design and Geoscience Australia

Image credit (cover): Patsy Hely, Re-enactment Vase: Huckitta meteorite headed for earth, 2019, porcelain, red earthenware, under and overglaze colour, ceramic decals, 39.5cm x 10.5cm. Photograph: Brenton McGeachie.

GEO: Art of the Collection

Pie Bolton

Lindy McSwan

Dioni Salas

Cassandra Brooker

Cat Mueller

Erica Seccombe

Julie Brooke

Al Munro

Kristina Sinadinovska

Susan Chancellor

Thomas O’Hara

Charles Tambiah

Tiffany Cole

Cathy Paver

Linda Tawagi

Liz Coats

Harijs Piekalns

Ruth Waller

Michelle Grimston

Anna Madeleine

Ella Whateley

Patsy Hely

John Reid

Cierra Wilson

Jan Mackay

Gilbert Riedelbauch

Wei-Rong Wu

Rowan McGinness

Annika Romeyn

Naomi Zouwer

A collaboration between Geoscience Australia and the ANU School of Art & Design, the exhibition is a response to Geoscience Australia’s vast and marvellous collection of rocks, minerals, crystals and fossils.

In October 2018 around fifty artists accepted Geoscience Australia’s invitation to spend a day amongst their massive and spectacular display of rocks, minerals, crystals and fossils and exploring ways in which they might respond to the collection, each in their own way, via their chosen medium.

Geoscience Staff and volunteers greeted the artists, offering expert knowledge and guidance.

Most of the artists had never visited their Symonston headquarters before. Here, open to the public, a series of glass display cases feature a fabulous sampling of the thousands of treasures they hold. The artists were thrilled by this wild and wonderful array of geological specimens and fascinated by the extraordinary range of intricate structures, planar and globular, crystalline and granular, forms micro and macro, soft and hard, the intense colour, patterns and optical effects.

The Geoscience team were excited by the artists evident enthusiasm and curiosity about the geological world and it was agreed this could well be the beginning of a beautiful and productive relationship. During the months that followed small groups of artists made follow up visits, and the Geoscience team generously facilitated access to particular specimens and related information on request.

This exhibition, featuring the work of thirty artists, is the first outcome of this initiative and developing creative relationship between Geoscience Australia and the ANU School of Art & Design.

Image credit: Dionisia Salas

She, 2018, gouache monoprint and acrylic on paper, 21.5 x 35 cm, Photo: David Patterson.

GEOSCIENCE AUSTRALIA Geoscience Australia is custodian of world-class mineral, meteorite, gemstone and fossil specimens in the National Mineral & Fossil Collection. The collection is of scientific, historic, aesthetic, and social significance. Geoscience Australia is responsible for the management and preservation of this collection, and for facilitating access to it for research, geoscience education and outreach. The material in the collection has been acquired through field discoveries by the organisation, scientific submissions, and via purchases, exchanges, donations and gifts over the years.

During the two decades after Federation in 1901, several surveys were conducted in Australia and Papua New Guinea, searching primarily for evidence of coal and oil reserves. Study of microfossils collected by the surveys and now stored in the collection, played a key role in finding these deposits.

In 1927, the first geological branch of the Department of Home and Territories was established to expand on this work. With the newly established capital Canberra, rock reference material from the A.C.T. was added to the collection.

The transfer of mineral specimens from the Australian Museum in 1940 formed the beginning of the mineral collection. At this time, the organisation began focusing on locating strategic mineral deposits, resulting in multiple field programs and the collection of ores and minerals including mica, beryl, asbestos and sulfides. The Bureau of Mineral Resources was formed in 1946 with the aim of mapping the entire country geologically. The number of specimens collected increased, and included a new focus on radioactive minerals. The first public display of museum quality minerals began in the 1950s. The 1960s saw a quick succession of purchases by the Commonwealth culminating with the acquisition of the Albert ‘Flossie’ Campbell collection, featuring particularly fine mineral specimens from Broken Hill. The 1970s saw three more major donations.

Image credit (right): Malachite. Photo: Diana Kirby.

Today, the mineral collection comprises 15,000 specimens of which 40% represent overseas localities, with a third of the total collection from Broken Hill, NSW. The fossil collection is dominated by invertebrate species of which a large number are microfossils, but also houses important vertebrate and plant fossils. Many specimens in the collection are ‘types’, on which the description and name of a new taxa is based. Since 1927 over 45,000 fossils from the collection have been published in journals, forming an essential scientific reference. Over 700 specimens are on permanent display in our foyer, which is open to the public Mon-Fri 9am-5pm. Specimens from the collection may be available to loan for bona fide purposes.

ROCKS IN MY HEAD Some collected writings on the contemplation of rocks

By Ruth Waller The Chinese have long held rocks in great esteem. You might call it petrophilia, lithophilia or even petromania. In their contemplation of rocks Chinese philosophers saw a correlation between the microcosmic and the macrocosmic, exemplified in the relation between rocks and mountains. In his essay Thinking Rocks, Living Stones: Reflections on Chinese Lithophilia philosopher Graham Parkes of the University of Vienna explains: …rocks are thought to partake of the powers of the mountain less through their resembling its outward appearance than for their being true microcosms, animated by the same energies that formed the heights and peaks (1).

Parkes goes on to quote Du Wan’s C12th Cloud Forest Catalogue of Rocks: The purest energy of the heaven-earth world coalesces into rock. It emerges, bearing the soil. Its formations are wonderful and fantastic . . . Within the size of a fist can be assembled the beauty of a thousand cliffs (2).

From the time of the T’ang and Song dynasties Gongshi, or spirit rocks, small pieces prized for their formations wonderful and fantastic, were mounted on carved rosewood stands and displayed on the desks of scholars or artists for their contemplation. (This tradition was carried over to Japan as suiseki.)

Large specimens were transported across the country to be displayed in the gardens and parkscapes of wealthy officialdom.

Image credit (right): Trilobite. Photo: Chris Fitzgerald.

A code of rock aesthetics developed with four key characteristics being celebrated: shou (a quality of ‘leanness’ seen as conveying the rock’s internal energy), zhou (wrinkling surface textures) and lou (channels and indentations) seen as revealing the forces of its formation), and tou (a ‘foraminate structure,’ of forms and voids with multiple holes and openings) (3).

Geo-veneration could become something of an obsession. Indeed, T’ang Dynasty poet and Prefect of Suzhou, Bai Juyi, in his essay, ‘Account of the Lake Tai Rock’, speaks of an ‘addiction’ to rocks and is said to having advised: Truly wise people should restrict their rock worship to a few hours a day (4).

Where Western culture has tended to draw a sharp distinction between the animate and inanimate, between life and rocks, ancient Chinese and Japanese cosmologies see all natural phenomena as configurations of the flow of energy, of qi. Qi runs through all things.

Alan Weiss in Zen Landscapes explains that stones are thus considered as concentrations of cosmic and telluric energy flowing in different patterns throughout the universe (5).

This idea has also appealed to radical western thinkers influenced by Buddhist thought, like nineteenth-century American ecologist Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in Walden: There is nothing inorganic . . . The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit – not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic (6).

Many of us have an intuitive sense of an essential interconnectedness across the natural world, and yet in the recent past geology and biology were pursued and taught as quite separate disciplines.

Recent science challenges this division.

In his essay, Mineral Fodder- how life made the earth into a cosmic marvel, Robert Hazen, research

scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysical Lab, describes how across deep time—from 4 billion years ago—there was an essential evolutionary interaction between minerals and the emergence of life resulting in the diversification both minerals and life forms: Life arose from minerals; then minerals arose from life. The geosphere and biosphere have become complexly intertwined, with numerous feedback loops driving myriad critical natural processes in ways that are only now coming into focus… For more than 2 billion years, virtually every facet of Earth’s near-surface environment has displayed the intimate interplay of life and rocks (7).

Our contemplation of geology, of the nature of minerals and fossils, can challenge the reaches of our imagination and consciousness, taking us into the realm of deep time and into the deep space of matter at an atomic level.

Panpsychists propose a kind of consciousness across all things- that “mind” is a universal and primordial feature of all matter. In his 2007 New York Times article Mind of a Rock, American philosopher Jim Holt suggests we tend to be somewhat parochial in our consideration of the cosmos: ...we have developed brains that, we fondly believe, are the most intricate things in the universe. We look down our noses at brute matter.

Gilbert Ridedelbauch Pyritetesc, 2019 aluminium composite 480 x 560 x 800 mm

When we turn our minds to rocks, Holt proposes we consider the notion of the rock as mind.

Take that rock over there. It doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything, at least to our gross perception. But at the micro-level it consists of an unimaginable number of atoms connected by springy chemical bonds, all jiggling around at a rate that even our fastest supercomputer might envy.

And they are not jiggling at random. The rock’s innards “see” the entire universe by means of the gravitational and electromagnetic signals it is continuously receiving. Such a system can be viewed as an all-purpose information processor, one whose inner dynamics mirror any sequence of mental states that our brains might run through.

Panpsychists thus contend that where there is information, there is consciousness. However, Holt points out: the rock doesn’t exert itself as a result of all this “thinking”… Its existence, unlike ours, doesn’t depend on the struggle to survive and self-replicate. It is indifferent to the prospect of being pulverized. If you are poetically inclined, you might think of the rock as a purely contemplative being. (8) And, while we may engage with some delight in the poetic contemplation of rocks, this may also prompt us to consider the challenges we now face as a species, given the impact we have had on the ecological inter-relations of rocks and life.

Image credit (previous page): Quartz. photo: Chris Fitzgerald.

Robert Hazen concludes: …humans have begun to alter many of Earth’s near-surface geochemical cycles – with open-pit and strip mining, agriculture and the use of fertilisers, the levelling of forests and the construction of cities and roads, the armouring of shorelines, the damming of rivers, the production of myriad new chemicals, and the ever-accelerating burning of fossil fuels…. These shifts within the Earth system are radical, even when set against geological time scales spanning millions of years… But saving ourselves will require a deeper understanding of the strange, twisty relationship between rocks and life…

We see this project as a small step in that direction.

ENDNOTES 1 Parkes, Graham, Thinking Rocks, Living Stones: Reflections on Chinese Lithophilia, p.78 http://dio.sagepub.com/ content/52/3/75 accessed 12/07/2019 2 cited in ibid. p.78 3 ibid. p.76 4 https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/gongshi/ 5 Weiss, Alan, Zen Landscapes, London, 2013, p.91 6 cited in Parkes, Graham, Thinking Rocks, Living Stones: Reflections on Chinese Lithophilia, p.83, http://dio.sagepub.com/ content/52/3/75 accessed 12/07/2019 7 Hazen, Robert, Mineral Fodder- how life made the earth into a cosmic marvel lhttps://aeon.co/essays/how-life-made-the-earth-into-a-cosmic-marvel, accessed 12/07/2019 8 Holt, Jim, Mind of a rock, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-lede-t.html, accessed 12/07/2019 9 Hazen, Robert, Mineral Fodder- how life made the earth into a cosmic marvel https://aeon.co/essays/how-life-made-theearth-into-a-cosmic-marvel, accessed 12/07/2019

Image credit: Al Munro Crystal Form 3 (detail), 2019 acrylic on birch panel 25 x 25 x 2 cm

THE ARTISTS PIE BOLTON Malachite is a copper carbonate hydroxide mineral with a chemical composition of Cu2(CO3)(OH)2 and presents as opaque bands of green in a various forms. Botryoidal malachite specimens in the Geoscience Australia collection provided inspiration to assemble a series of ceramic elements using only copper carbonate as the colourant in Malachite Transformation. Tests were conducted using different concentrations of copper carbonate in glazes, slips and porcelain. A rough vessel was formed from intensely copper stained porcelain and porcelain spheres (stained with varying degrees of copper), dipped in copper stained glazes and slips were contained within it. This experimental work was then fired in an electric kiln, leaving the result to chance and is presented as Malachite Transformation. An accompanying segment of a parallel copper carbonate work, Malachite Section, is exhibited beside Malachite Transformation to give the observer an insight into the interior of the work. An eyepiece (x3) can be used to examine this cross section in detail. Observers are welcome to handle Malachite Section.

-Pie Bolton is an Australian installation artist working at the human/geological interface. Her practice is grounded in materiality and temporality. She uses transformation of geological processes to expand ideas about humanity as a geological force. Tertiary studies in art and science (geology) have resulted in Pie’s unique, authoritative practice. Innovative objects and installations are backed up by sound research and technical expertise to assist the development of a clearer understanding of the complex relations between the human and nonhuman. Pie has worked as an exploration geologist, is an experienced ceramic technician, owns and operates a ceramic studio called ‘The Kiln Room’ and is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT University in Melbourne.

Image credit: Pie Bolton Malachite Transformation, 2019 ceramic and copper carbonate 6 x 18.5 x 19 cm.

CASSANDRA BROOKER Scientists and artists have often talked about humans’ evolutionary interconnectedness with the natural world and the interactions between the geo and biospheres. Cassandra’s love of New Zealand and Australia’s richly diverse landscapes, colour palettes and unique native flora, fauna and geology influences her more peaceful, reflective art works. Due to her military background, Cassandra appreciates the importance of understanding the geography and terrain of the battlespace, and enjoys analysing details of objects contained within the landscape. Therefore, the opportunity to interact with Geo-science Australia’s beautiful mineral, gemstone and fossil collection last year was a wonderful experience for Cassandra, not only because of her affinity with the natural environment and keenness to learn about the collection; but also in appreciating the mindfulness that the concentration on drawing minute details of the minerals entailed. Cassandra drew two minerals during the GA artist open day in October 2018 - Calcite and Cerussite. Since that time she has created artworks of Opal, Agate, Mica, Tiger Eye, Chalcedony, Anglesite and Azurite from photographs provided by GA of their 700 items on permanent display, and additional specimens in the vault - including some glow-in-the-dark rocks (under UV light).

-Before moving to Australia, Cassandra grew up in rural New Zealand (where much of her formal art training was by correspondence) and travelled the world for a few years. Her Kiwi heritage and interconnectedness with the landscape influence her style of art. Her tutors have encouraged experimentation with various mediums and as a result, Cassandra has continued to adapt her style to incorporate new techniques and subjects from her global travels, time living in Europe and Vietnam, as well as her military experiences. Cassandra likes to use a variety of mediums, but prefers oil painting, and pen and ink predominantly. Her work reflects her life experiences and personal narratives. As a full time Army Officer, she uses art as a means to relax during operational deployments and fits it in around high tempo roles and continual travel.

Image credit: Cassandra Brooker The Opera House - Cerussite drawing (detail), 2018, mixed media, dimensions variable.

JULIE BROOKE In her painting practice, Julie Brooke mines the intersections between visual art, science and mathematics to explore her fascination with geometry and visual illusion. She employs skewed grids, repeating geometric forms and carefully orchestrated colour combinations to conjure fugitive colours and shifting illusions of three-dimensional space which call into question perceptions of colour and space.

-Dr Julie Brooke is a Canberra-based artist and former biomedical scientist. She completed a practice-led visual arts PhD in 2013 for which she was awarded an ANU J. G. Crawford Award, and is a lecturer in the Painting Workshop in the ANU School of Art & Design.

Image credit: Julie Brooke A Barrow Full of Rocks, 2019 acrylic on board 30 x 30 cm.

SUSAN CHANCELLOR Susan Chancellor graduated with a practice-led PhD in visual art at ANU in 2018. Based on the Far South Coast of NSW, Chancellor is essentially a painter, although print making and drawing are part of her practice and in recent years the monotype has bee the focus of her work. Chancellor explores themes of time, space and memory through lived experiences such as family life, nature, interior and exterior spaces.

Formerly a physiotherapist, Chancellor began exhibiting in 2003 and since then has held twelve solo exhibitions and taken part in many group exhibitions. She has been a selected finalist for twenty curated art prizes, winning a number of awards including both the Basil Sellers Prize at Moruya and the Bega Valley Art Award in 2014. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the ACT Legislative Assembly and Basil Sellers as well as in private collections.

-Initially I was attracted to the luminosity and particular colours of wavellite and its fragile floral quality. I became further intrigued by the complexity in the formations of spherical clusters as they overlapped in multi-directional, complex associations with each other. This work is an exploration of these qualities; using translucent paint on paper to reflect luminosity and colour and various forms that aim to suggest my observations of the structures of several specimens from the collection at Geoscience Australia.  

Susan Chancellor Wavellite I, 2019 gouache on paper 66 x 32cm

Image credit: Tiffany Cole Play of Colour: Opalised belemite, 2019 oil on panel, 30.5 x 30.5 cm.

TIFFANY COLE I am fascinated by the visual experience of iridescence and the pleasures and challenges of portraying this effect in painting. When I behold an iridescent object, I feel compelled to turn it over in my hands to explore the metamorphosing play of colour and light. I become hypnotised by the shifting, glittering colours.

For this exhibition, I wanted to explore the iridescent light effects of opal, and to somehow capture a sense of its luminosity. I chose to depict the pale belemnite opal specimen from Geoscience Australia’s collection. It is actually the rostrum from a fossilised squid-like creature that became extinct 66 million years ago.

Translating this optical experience into a painting poses an interesting challenge: to portray shifting coloured light into coloured matter in the static form of a painting.

Tiffany Cole was born in Coffs Harbour NSW and currently lives and works in Canberra, ACT. She completed a PhD in the Painting workshop of the Australian National University in 2019. Cole is the recipient of a number of prizes and scholarships, including the Spanish Embassy Young Australian Artists’ Travelling Scholarship in 2006 and the QANTAS Foundation Encouragement of Australian Art Award in 2010, which took her research to South America and Northern Europe. Tiffany was also a finalist in the National Still Life Award in 2017. She has exhibited in a number of solo and group exhibitions in the ACT, VIC and NSW.

LIZ COATS Stones and rocks, and indeed the ground I walk on, hold so much more than surface appearances might suggest. On picking up a stone, it is contrast, a unique stratigraphy of shape and colour that first captures my attention. I’m reminded how initial impressions, on closer inspection of surface, tell of substances within that make appearance what it is.

With the paintings, despite careful planning and close attention to process, unpredictable elements always appear in the colour spreads - simple fuel to my continuing explorations.

‘Split Rock’, with its linked shapes and colours, I suggest, can evoke associations without being representational. The painting becomes a kind of aggregate where liquid paint expands and colours shift during the layering process, so that in completion, the whole image is never predetermined.

Examining rocks in the Geoscience collection, sourced within larger formations and frequently when that fabric is cracked open, I see colours transform as light plays through transparent, opaque and oblique strata formed under pressure, heat and erosion.

-Liz Coats received a doctorate from the School of Art ANU in 2012, addressing Organic Abstraction; MFA Research from the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, experimenting with kiln-fired pigments on glass panels, in 1997. A survey exhibition with a publication, Liz Coats - Active Seeing, curated

by Tony Oates at the Drill Hall Gallery ANU, Oct-Dec 2017. Solo shows in Australia, New Zealand and Beijing since 1977. Liz has been included in many group exhibitions in Australia and overseas, including Abstraction – Celebrating Australian women abstract artists, National Gallery of Australia travelling exhibition 2017-8; Abstracting the Collection, Lawrence Wilson Gallery, University of WA, Perth, 2013; Word of mouth, Canberra Museum and Gallery, 2012; Abstraction, Art Gallery of NSW, 1990; Tokyo Connection: Australian Artists’ Studio, Heineken Exhibition Centre, Tokyo, 1990.

Awards include Artist’s Fellowship, Visual Arts/Crafts Board, Australia Council, 1989; Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, New York, 1999. Public collections include: Art Gallery of NSW, National Gallery of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Australian National Gallery, Queensland Art Gallery, Newcastle, New England & Campbelltown Art Galleries; Cruthers Collection, University of Western Australia.

Liz has participated in field research with the Environment Studio, ANU School of Art, since 2009.

Canberra Critics’ Circle Visual Art Award, 2018. Liz lives and works in Canberra and is represented by Utopia Art, in Sydney.

Image credit: Liz Coats, Red Core (detail), 2019, acrylic on linen.

MICHELLE GRIMSTON ‘Origins of Breath’ responds to Banded Iron Formations (or BIFs) from the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Formed between 3.5 and 1.8 billion years ago during the Great Oxygenation Event,

the rhythmic bands of iron rich and iron poor materials document the gradual transition of Earth’s atmosphere from one that was all but devoid of free oxygen to the oxygen rich air that today supports such a diversity of life on earth. Although BIFs are found across the globe, those in the Pilbara are unique for the presence of shimmering golden Tiger’s Eye - which appears thanks to the infamous and deadly blue asbestos found in the region - amongst the more common reds, greys and blacks of Hematite and Jaspilite. These unique BIFs are represented here through the medium of woven tapestry, itself a time-consuming process which relies on the gradual laying down of layer upon layer of material to build up the form over time, mirroring the formation of this ancient sedimentary rock.

Breathing deeply and focusing on this rhythmic process of layering, offers a contemplative space to consider the vastness of geological time and our extraordinary fragility as oxygen-dependant life forms in this ever-changing environment.

-Michele Grimston is an artist and community cultural development practitioner based in the ACT. She completed her honours degree in textiles at the ANU School of Art in 2009 and in 2014, she graduated with a Masters in Community Cultural Development from the VCA. She has held solo shows in Canberra, Melbourne and Perth and undertaken multiple artist residencies – creating individual works at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada and working with schools and community groups across Australia to facilitate community created work. The common thread across her works is connection. Grimston explores the connections which hold together the systems of our world – whether these be personal, social or ecological. The flimsy materials and labour-intensive practices that form the base of her individual practice, hint at the fragility of such systems and the ongoing effort required to sustain them, while her community-based works attempt to actively engage in this effort.

Image credit: Michelle Grimston Origins of Breath II, 2019 woven tapestry, 13 x 8 cm.

PATSY HELY In my time looking at samples in the study rooms at Geoscience Australia I was shown, in small cardboard boxes, meteorites or parts thereof labelled and named according to either where they were found or the person who found them. Many of the meteorite samples I saw looked just like rocks picked up in any a field and so I started to think of them as embodying, in their familiarity, a collapsing of the here and the there. Space was once so foreign and unknown but in recent years science has made it a much more ordinary place, graspable both intellectually and physically.

In my works I’ve imagined meteorites from the collection plunging to earth, with my depictions of space/the universe on vessel forms drawn from both real (NASA), and invented (film, comics) imagery.

The forms themselves are intended to act as somewhat fanciful surrogates for space.

-Dr Patsy Hely is an artist working predominately in the ceramic medium. Her work is held in many collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the National Gallery of Australia and the Powerhouse Museum. She worked as an academic from 1989 – 2014, most recently at the ANU School of Art where she convened the Honours and Graduate Coursework programs and where she is currently an Emeritus Fellow. Her practice also encompasses writing and curating, with essays published in national and international publications. Currently she works as an independent artist and writer.

Image credit: Patsy Hely Re-enactment Vase: Huckitta meteorite headed for earth, 2019, porcelain, earthenware, 39.5 x 10.5cm.

JAN MACKAY Jan had access to so many interesting and visually compelling specimens from the Geoscience collection, that initially she was overwhelmed with the choice of possibilities from which to make work for this exhibition.

Then she decided to work from a personal geographical connection.

Between 1990 and 1997 she had lived in Alice Springs/Mparntwe and had found the country in Central Australia inspiring. She had been attracted not only to the broad, sweeping forms of the country but also to the details of plants and vegetation within those forms, the delicacy, patterns and strength of them. In the early morning and early evening the country becomes soft, with muted colours of mauves, pinks and dark grey greens with glimpses of sharp orange where the sun might hit the rocky surfaces. Jan designed and printed fabrics from drawings and photographs that she took. She also made drawings and paintings on paper.

For this exhibition, one of the specimens that that she chose to work from is the Rosettes of Azurite (sometimes called Azurite suns), examples of which are in the display cases at Geoscience. It is an intense, luminous and compelling blue and roundish in shape, thus the name rosette or sun. It comes from the Malbunka mine, a few hundred km west of Alice Springs. The suite of three paintings and one collage includes a landscape indicating the mine site and gives context to the more abstracted works.

The diptych ‘Texture/ Rainbow lattice sunstone’ Hart’s Range NT is a gestural, lyrical interpretation of various textures/surfaces on the left panel along with the small and beautiful Rainbow lattice sunstone, also on display at Geoscience. Hart’s Range is 215 km NE of Alice Springs.

Upon reflection, Jan realised that in the years in Alice she thought about and looked and worked from what she could see on and above the ground. This work is taken from what is in and beneath.

-Jan currently makes paintings/drawings and collages and she has mainly shown her work at Gallery East in Sydney, since 2000. After finishing the then 5-year diploma at NAS in Sydney she worked across different media including designing and printing posters and fabrics, illustration, artist-incommunity projects and residencies and, for a time in the late 1970’s and through the 1980’s, Art direction for film - mostly with women film makers. In Canberra she was a lecturer in Foundation/Core Studies 1998-2005, and she worked at the NGA from 2006 to early 2013. She grew up in Sydney and has lived in Alice Springs/Mparntwe (1990-97), Cambridge, Massachusetts (2003-2004) and, since 1997, Canberra.

Image credit (previous page): Jan McKay Rosettes of Azurite (Azurite suns), Malbunka Mine (near Areyonga) NT 2019, acrylic on canvas, 91.4cm x 45.7cm.

Image credit (this page): Azurite suns on kaolin. Photo: Jeff

Scovil.

ROWAN MCGINNESS Rowan McGinness’ practice considers how tactility and spatial engagement open up possibilities for making paintings that invite the audience to have an expanded experience of viewing. She aims to achieve this by creating works that place an emphasis on the sense of touch and bodily engagement.

Her studio research takes form as hybrid painted objects that balance materiality and illusion.

-Rowan McGinness is an emerging contemporary artist born and residing in Canberra, Australia. She recently graduated with Honours from the Australian National University School of Art and Design.

She won awards at her Graduating Exhibition in 2018 through the Emerging Artist Support Scheme (EASS), including an acquisition award and an exhibition award at Alliance Français.

Image credit: Rowan McGuiness R19447: Native Copper, 2019 mixed media on fabric, 54 x 86 x 4cm.

Photo: David Lindesay.

LINDY MCSWAN The vessel is the predominant form of expression in Lindy McSwan’s practice in which collections of mild steel vessels are most often enamelled or blackened through heat colouring. Collections of vessels reference Lindy’s experience of travel to remote parts of Australia and the aesthetics unique to the worn and weathered landscapes she explores, expressing either finer detail therein or vast and distant panoramas. Lindy’s current practice led research is an investigation into the materials that make steel, the sites of iron ore mining and steel production in Australia. Field trips to Iron Knob iron ore mine and the Whyalla and Port Kembla Steel works have been undertaken as part of her research and inform this work. Her investigation and experimentation looks to the minerals used in iron and steel making and how she can use these as materials in studio practice. Using samples of iron ore collected on her field trips she has finely ground this material to be used in combination with vitreous enamel applied to the surface of these vessels.

-Lindy McSwan completed a BA (Fine Art) Honours in Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT University in 2014. She received an Australia Council for the Arts, ArtStart Grant in 2015 enabling her to establish an independent studio practice. Lindy’s has exhibited widely in Australia, in New Zealand, Japan, the USA and Europe. In late 2017 Lindy was an Artist in Residence in the Bundanon Trust program and was the first artist to work in the Dorothy Dwyer silversmithing studio. In 2018 Lindy returned to RMIT to commence a Master of Fine Art by Research and is undertaking material focused practiceled research. Lindy received the Alchimia Student Award at JOYA Barcelona 2018, where a collection of vessels from her MFA research was exhibited for the first time. Her work has been acquired by the W.E. McMillan Collection, RMIT, The Bluestone Collection, Melbourne and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada.

Image credit: Lindy McSwan Of Dust and Rust, 2018 mild steel, foundsteel objects Dimensions variable.

CAT MUELLER During artists visits to Geoscience Australia, a selection of specimens was laid out. Upon closer inspection of her chosen mineral, Mueller discovered it was calcite sourced from her mother’s home state of Missouri, USA. Intrigued by this coincidence Mueller, a first-generation Australian, decided to focus on geological specimens originating from states significant to both her maternal and paternal heritage, thus using geology as a vehicle to document her genealogy. Just like Mueller’s parents, these specimens travelled far from their ‘birthplace’ and original context all the way to Canberra.

Mueller drew each specimen from multiple angles then used paint-markers to ‘colour-in’ each outline, a process frequently employed in her practice. The colours in the drawings do not correlate to the colours of the specimens, Fchales conceptually mirroring how a first generation-Australian can not truly understand their heritage. She created concentric lines outside and inside of the gem shapes, similar to a stratum (distinct layers of rock) or the layers in her purple agate slice from the Joplin Mineral Museum.

Mueller particularly enjoyed how the samples were catalogued, each specimen charmingly placed in its own miniature cardboard box, with type-written notations and the odd rusted paperclip.

Because the geographical origin of the samples was essential to the work, each specimen’s label was incorporated. At A4 scale the drawings are notably smaller than Mueller’s usual works. This intimate size, combined with the Perspex box-frames, gives a scientific feel to the drawings, echoing the glass display cases at Geoscience or a souvenir specimen box, gridded and labelled featuring a variety of crystals.

Several memories of her childhood visits centre around geology. One summer she marvelled at Fantastic Caverns, a ride-through cave in Missouri. She explored Red Rocks, Colorado, a naturallyformed sandstone amphitheatre, where her father attended rock concerts. Her mother has always collected rocks, starting with smuggling a rock-filled suitcase home from summer camp in Minnesota.

Mueller has always admired her collection which includes turquoise from New Mexico and desert rose crystals from Saudi Arabia where Mueller’s parents met before immigrating to Australia.

-Cat Mueller graduated with First Class Honours from the ANU School of Art Painting Workshop in 2015. She was selected for the ‘HATCHED: National Graduate Show 2015’ at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) and was awarded a residency at Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) undertaken in 2016. In 2017 she created a site-specific airbrushed painting for ‘BLAZE XI’ at CCAS Gorman House. During 2017 she held two solo exhibitions; ‘Morph’, a series of small dotted paintings at CCAS Manuka; and ‘NONSTOP!’ at ANCA Gallery where she showed a series of largescale airbrushed paintings and was acquired

by Artbank Australia. She travelled to Hobart to create a site-specific airbrushed painting for ‘HoBiennale 17’ for which she received CAPO’s Eckersley’s Materials Award. In 2018 Mueller exhibited solo at Gaffa Gallery, Sydney, and in numerous group exhibitions including at May Space, Sydney; Tributary Projects, Canberra and in 2019 Artereal, Sydney. Her work is held in the ANU Drill Hall Gallery Collection, the Prime West Perth Collection and Artbank Australia.

Image credit (this page): Cat Mueller, Missouri, 2018 paint marker on paper, 29.7 x 21 cm Image credit (right): Azurite sun (polished), photo: Chris Fitzgerald.

AL MUNRO For a number of years my work has explored the visualisation of scientific information relating to geology, exploring what happens when the uniqueness of individual examples is distilled and averaged into type specimens and simplified diagrams. I find both the specimens and the diagrams fascinating and do not see the translation of information from object to representation as being a reductive one. For me, this process is a case of creating something that is ‘different to’ rather than ‘lesser than’.

The works in this exhibition, Crystal Form 1-5, seek to engage aspects of the specimens held in the collection at GeoScience Australia (colour, lustre) as well as their diagrammatic rendering in relation to crystallographic lattices and indices.

-Al Munro is a Canberra-region artist whose practice spans textile, print and drawing-based media. Her recent work takes as its point of departure, the relationship between textile materials and techniques and mathematics, investigating the geometry of weave structures, pleating and various pattern systems. Current works are investigating the relationship of textile patterning to painted abstraction.

Al has exhibited throughout Australia and internationally and is represented by May Space Gallery, Sydney. Al holds a PhD from ANU and her work in held in both public and private collections.

THOMAS O’HARA The Earth’s geology is in a constant process of material being added and subtracted. Sediment builds up layer upon layer while water, wind and ice wear and erode it bit by bit.

In a similar process, Thomas O’Hara makes objects that are built from many small pieces of wood that are joined together to form a layer, followed by another layer, then another, progressively building a larger more complex form. This additive process is followed by a subtractive one where fire, sandblasting and grinding are used to erode material. Within the limits of this process Thomas seeks a complexity within his object, a complexity like that which he sees and is inspired by in the many geological formations he visits in his travels.

-Thomas began his working career as an electrician, using his hands to build, repair and maintain electrical systems. Having always had an interest in working with his hands but wanting to extend into a more creative sphere, Thomas took time out from being an electrician to undertake a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University, Melbourne. Studying in the Gold and Silversmithing Workshop Thomas learnt to work with a wide range of material in jewellery and small object. Currently he is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University where he continues to explore the handmade object.

Image credit (this page): Thomas O’Hara, Untitled, 2019, spotted gum 25 x 24 x 14 cm.

Image credit (previous page): Al Munro Crystal Form 3 (detail), 2019 acrylic on birch panel 25 x 25 x 2 cm.

CATHY PAVER Banded formation are inspired by the patterns of the Banded Iron formations( BIF) of the Pilbara which are currently being mined. These formation coincided with the development of life on Earth 2.4 billion years ago. They formed over a period of 800,000,000 years. The thin bands in the formation are created from iron poor silica based rock( chert) and iron rich rock( haematite, magnetite) These layers reflect how a living population ( blue green algae) went through a population explosion which resulted in excess waste ( oxygen) and uncontrolled use of essential resources ( soluble iron) which ultimately resulted in their near extinction. The relevance of this story to humanity, in the Anthropocene era, is clear. We are currently finding volumes of plastics on our ocean beds that have been laid down in less than 200 years... maybe the first layer of a new “ Banded Plastic formation” and all that this pattern implies.

-Cathy has always enjoyed great satisfaction and joy that comes from striving to understand the patterns of our world and humanity. This interest has lead to her life of study and work initially in science and health and then design and visual arts. her visual exploration has primarily been through the medium of painting but she has always been interested in how changing the physicality of the work can change the meaning. This exploration has recently involved micro mosaics which has allowed her to both reduce the size of her work and to introduce materials that in themselves have meaning. The journey continues.

Image credit: Cathy Paver Banded Iron Formation I, 2019 glass and steel, 9.5 x 10 x 1 cm Photo: Ross Peake.

HARIJS PIEKALNS Harijs Piekalns practice seeks to re-interpret Pre-Christian, Folkloric runic symbols through their use in conceptual, abstract work. These symbols pre-date written language and represent elements such as God, The Earth Mother and Fate, along with the sun, moon, lightning and numerous deities associated with agricultural life.As a first generation Australian, Piekalns has developed a deep interest in Aboriginal culture and recognises many affinities with Latvian cultural practices. Initially attracted to the beauty of ochre sites while camping along the Far South Coast of NSW, he has exclusively used earth pigments to hand grind his own paint for the past 15 years. Piekalns combines ochre with beeswax and linseed oil or emulsion, using techniques extant since Medieval times and earlier.

The source of the ochre pigment and the same pigment located within a painting form a tacit link and metaphor for that country. Each pigment is a location.

-Harijs Piekalns (born Melbourne, 1954) is a first generation Australian of Latvian heritage. He completed a Higher Diploma of Teaching, Secondary Art and Craft (1976); a Bachelor of Education, Art and Craft (1985) and a Master of Visual Arts (Advanced) in Painting (2018) at the School of Art and Design, College of Arts and Sciences, Australian National University.

While mainly a painter, Piekalns has also worked in sculpture, holography and photography.

His work is in private collections in Australia and overseas.

Image credit: Harijs Piekalns, Broken Promises (detail) 2019, oil and emulsion on linen laid over plywood; glass, ochre, epoxy resin, petrified conifer/pine.

Dimensions variable.

ANNA MADELEINE These augmented reality (AR) artworks reimagine past life forms embedded in rock surfaces. Using specimens from the Geoscience Australia collection as AR targets, the three pieces become animated when viewed through an AR app on a mobile device.

Through this technique, these works express past life forms and processes that have contributed to the rock surface formation. For example, transforming the thin layers of sedimentary rock into line animation creates an abstract interpretation of the banded iron formation process caused by interaction between dissolved iron in the ocean and oxygen released by photosynthetic cyanobacteria. The augmented trilobite fossil brings the ancient marine creature from 514 million years ago back to life, and the Glossopteris piece envisages the fossilised leaves that were important in showing how ancient land forms were once connected.

-Anna Madeleine is an artist working with AR, VR, drawing, animation and installation to explore how technology and personal expression recursively evolve. She has a PhD in Media Arts from UNSW Art & Design (2014) and is a Lecturer in Printmedia & Drawing at ANU School of Art & Design.

Recent awards include an Art Gallery of NSW studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2018), an Asialink Arts residency with Common Room Network Foundation, Indonesia (2017), a Vice Chancellor’s Artist Fellowship at the ANU Medical School, and an ArtsACT grant to be a visiting scholar at the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California (2016).

Anna has had solo exhibitions in New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Montreal and Bandung.

Her work has been selected for prizes including the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize (2018), the Aesthetica Art Prize (2017), and the Churchie Emerging Arts Prize (2016).

Image credit: Anna Madeline Raupach Banded Iron (detail), 2019 augmented reality dimensions variable

JOHN REID My focus was on the intellectual property in the Geosciences collection. I unearthed the location of two rock repositories nearby in New South Wales: a library of shale near Gundaroo; and volumes of sedimentary material in the Murrum-Sutton archive. I withdrew a copybook from each place. I took the liberty to photographically record some pages before returning the documents.

-John Reid is an Emeritus Fellow of The Australian National University (ANU). He was a staff member at the ANU School of Art from 1978–2013 where he integrated a visual art practice in photography, collage and performance about the environment, human rights and cultural identity into his role as a researcher, educator, curator and graphic designer.

He currently advises academic and community agencies on the engagement of visual artists in public communication strategies.  

Image credit: John Reid Murrum-Sutton Copybook (detail), 2019, digital photograph 13.7 x 10 cm

GILBERT RIEDELBAUCH The near perfect Pyrite cubic crystal in the display at Geoscience Australia caught Riedelbauch’s eye. His response is Pyritetesc, drawing closely on the appearance of this mineral in its crystallised form. Geometry and experimentation play important roles in this work translating Pyrite into a different material and scale. The folding of a 2D pattern into a 3D form builds on Riedelbauch’s approach to combine a manual craft practice with digital fabrication processes. The initial idea is sketched and made into scale model to see whether a design is likely to work as a larger, 3D object. Once converted into a digital file the design is engraved and cut into aluminium composite materials on a computer-controlled router. In the final steps Riedelbauch completes the object manually using folding, assembling and finishing techniques. Of particular interest is the high-quality surface of each element and object. Riedelbauch takes particular care to maintain an industrial finish of individual elements throughout all the working processes. In this case however, matching nature’s precision is a challenge.

-Gilbert Riedelbauch is a designer/maker who works with a variety of traditional and contemporary materials and processes. As a silversmith he is particularly interested in the integration of digital fabrication processes together with traditional metalworking techniques. Gilbert Riedelbauch maintains a professional practice in Canberra from where he exhibits nationally and internationally.

He holds qualifications from the Academy of Fine Art Nuernberg, Germany and the Australian National University. Over the last 20 years he received multiple awards for his distinguished contribution to university teaching. He currently is undertaking Doctoral studies at the ANU. Image credit: Gilbert Ridedelbauch Pyritetesc, 2019 aluminium composite 480 x 560 x 800 mm.

Image credit: Annika Romeyn Borrowed Time, 2019 monotype and pencil on paper 112 x 76 cm

ANNIKA ROMEYN Among all the rare and wondrous specimens of Geoscience Australia’s National Mineral and Fossil Collection, Annika’s focus was captured by the blackness and irregular surface of a piece of highranking coal. The sample was formed from compressed plant material in the Permian age, some 300 – 251 million years ago. Up close, strangely beautiful planes of reflected light are visible, yet the form looms ominously – inseparable from the potent political and cultural resonances it carries.

The devastating environmental impact of burning coal as a fossil fuel is a defining feature of the Anthropocene and the need for a shift to renewable energy sources is urgent. Using monotype printmaking techniques to layer black watercolour and denser black etching ink, Annika has paired her print with its ‘ghost’ to highlight the finite and unsustainable nature of coal as a resource.

-Annika Romeyn graduated with First Class Honours in Printmedia and Drawing from the Australian National University (2010) after studying on scholarship at Morgan State University, Baltimore, USA (2005 – 2009). Annika is currently a studio artist at M16 Artspace, Canberra and is represented

by Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne. Annika’s artistic interests have been nurtured by formative opportunities, including the Embassy of Spain’s Torres Travelling Scholarship (2011) and the Bathurst Regional Gallery’s Hill End Residency (2015). Annika’s drawings, prints and watercolours are inspired by the experience of being in the landscape and have been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Annika’s work was recently Highly Commended in the 2019 Megalo International Print Prize.

DIONI SALAS Print is fascinating and versatile. It’s punk to prestige, and everything between, able to sit back, shout forth or marry with other mediums. At times, as with Dionisia Salas, traditional modalities collide with and immediacy of the hand in work that is altogether fresh. At every point, Salas’ careful and calculated image structure is belied by her works’ uncontainable, irresistible vivacity and electricity, mesmeric whoops and furls.

Throughout her oeuvre there is a breadth of approaches, but the assertive constants of colour and surface, layering and pattern have all the hallmarks of print in a painterly package.

-Born in Darwin in 1982 Dionisia Salas spent her early life eclectically, living in Alice Springs, Dubbo, Botswana and Newcastle before arriving in Canberra to study at the ANU School of Art and Design, graduating in 2007. She has since lived and practiced in Canberra, Melbourne and Berlin.

Salas has received numerous grants and awards including an ArtsACT project grant in 2017 and the Torres Spanish Travel Scholarship for Young Australian Artists in 2008.

She has participated in residencies including the Art Vault, Mildura in 2017, Glint a collaboration between the Canberra Glassworks and Megalo Print Studio in 2013 and a Basso Kreuzberg residency in Berlin in 2011. Recent exhibitions include at Watters Gallery in Sydney and Sutton Gallery in Melbourne as well as a multitude of exhibitions in Canberra including at Canberra Contemporary Art Space Gorman House, the ANU School of Art and Design Gallery and ANCA Bus Project.

Image credit: Dionisia Salas, She, 2018 gouache monoprint and acrylic on paper, 21.5 x 35 cm. Photo: David Patterson

ERICA SECCOMBE This series of drawings, ‘Plants of the Carboniferous era,’ is inspired by Erica’s visit to Geoscience.

Erica has often explored the concept of geological time in her work, and in particular the idea of our own time in context of the Anthropocene. In this work Erica is referring of the Paleozoic Era when plants covered the Earth. It began 354 million years ago and lasted for about 64 million years, 290 million years before our own time. The name “Carboniferous” derives from the large amounts of carbon-bearing coal that was formed from rotting prehistoric plants. For this series Erica has used rich-black mineral pigment called Biddeford Black, derived from the ancient coal seams around Biddeford, Devon in the UK. These drawings play on the style of scientific illustrations but make reference to the history of coal as a way to highlight the our dependency on fossil fuels, and the significant impact this has had the world’s environment.

-Dr Erica Seccombe is a visual artist based in the Canberra region. Erica began her studies in Printmaking at the Darwin Institute of Technology and completed a degree in Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts in 1990. Her practice now spans from traditional and photographic print media and drawing to experimental digital platforms using frontier scientific visualisation software. She is currently Acting Head of Foundation Studies at the ANU School of Art & Design and is the Convener of Graduate Studies Coursework for Visual Arts, Design and Art History and Curatorship. Erica is a long-serving board member of Megalo Print Studio + Gallery. Her work ‘Metamorphosis’ won the 2018 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize.

Image credit: Erica Seccombe Plants of the Carboniferous era (detail) 2019 mineral coal on paper (Biddeford Black) 110 x 65cm.

KRISTINA SINADINOVSKA I am an introspective painter who draws inspiration from outside the artist to landscape and nature itself. My paintings often revolve around my experience with the outdoor environment and how others have represented it. In particular I find trees fascinating, as I feel this one figure can encompass qualities of the larger natural world. My work displays some paradoxes and ambiguity is a key drive for me. There may not have a proper answer or solution to what I attempt to paint, but to try something impossible can be rather enjoyable. My paintings are about the artist in vast environments. In a sense each work is a self-portrait or a mind-map of my thoughts, feelings, experiences and perceptions. The paradox lies in using trees as a means to display my humanness. How can my experience of nature be represented in material form or the two dimensions of a painting? Can I paint ambiguous space, possible or not?

Only a moment, but you have left a lasting impression. This painting is my response to Geoscience Australia’s 2018 Art of the Collection Artists’ Workshop. Prior to this workshop, I was a volunteer at Geoscience Australia and contributed to the work of the Curatorial Services team. I was fortunate enough to get close to some of the world’s oldest and most expensive treats (and some friendly folks).

Old habits die hard it seems. Despite spending lots of time looking at minerals, it was fossilised leaves that captured my heart. And why fight it; it is a Romantic artist that I was always meant to be. This is because it is trees that fascinate me. And it is trees that I will come to for inspiration. The petrified fern also peeked my interest, but no, it was not like the veins of an ancient leaf.

The specimen I observed for this painting is glossopteris. It is Permian in age, so about 299 to 252 million years old. If comes from Mudgee in New South Wales. My glossopteris doesn’t have the same glitz or glamour as some of the other specimens on display at the workshop. It looks a little rusty and oxidised around the edges and has accidently been broken at the corner and gently glued back together. These qualities however, make it even more special to me.

This painting started out streaky as I was aiming to echo the many layers of leaves and the translucent nature of the fossils. But the more I worked on it, the more dense and rock-like it became. Despite all the line-work, it is a very solid painting. And, much like the specimen, you can get lost trying to ‘see things’ when looking into it. I hope you can ‘see things’ when looking at this painting. Things with stories and meaning. And things that are nothing.

Image credit: Kristina Sinadinovska Only a moment, but you have left a lasting impression, 2019 oil on canvas, 60 x 90 x 3 cm.

CHARLES TAMBIAH The challenge with marine volcanoes and tectonic activity is that they are rarely seen if ever. The rocks that are collected from the seafloor some 2000-3000 meters below the ocean surface narrate this story and history. Lava erupts on the seafloor forming characteristic “pillow” shapes, with black glassy rinds formed by quenching of the magma against cold seawater. As the pillow cools, a gas phase saturates in the magma, migrating from the core of the pillow towards its rim. Its this special chemical process of gasses and metallic sulphides and chlorides which deposit to form Alteration Halos. This amazing transformation, combination of reactions and counter reactions, timing and opportunity, is why these artwork came to adopt the name and process of this natural phenomena.

Photographing the intense colours of Alteration Halos and Igneous folds on rocks collected from the seafloor was both inspirational and challenging. Their tendency to fade once the rocks hit the deck of the ship and imaging black glass required innovation in approach. The imagery presented in this artwork were taken within hours after the rocks were brought to the surface and revealed with lightpainting. In addition to imaging entire volcanic rocks, smaller sections of the rocks provided aesthetic abstractions and natural amalgamations. Undertaking such tasks on a rolling ship on the high seas added to the expediency and innovation employed in such marine Geoscience expeditions.

-Charles Tambiah is a ScienceArt photographer and a ScienceArt researcher at the Australian National University. He integrates his academic career in human-wildlife geography and communityengagement with his arts practice. His field-based research and creative projects in over 20 countries brings a unique cross-cultural lens and an Indigenous filter to his visual narratives. Using unorthodox techniques and aesthetically layered compositions, he produces diverse and engaging images used in education, research, and communication. His ScienceArt-works have been exhibited in Australia, USA, and UK. His publications include the co-authored ANU book “Engaging Visions: Engaging Artists with the Community about the Environment.” His recent research-led practice has focused on marine Geoscience expeditions to the South Pacific and Antarctic Southern Ocean, and on crosscultural visual narratives within the Murray Darling River Basin.

Image credit: Charles Tambiah Alteration Halos, 2019 digital mosaic 99 x 85 x 1 cm

LINDA TAWAGI This image was created in response to a visit to Geoscience Australia and after viewing various meteorite cross sections. I have always been interested in observing and capturing the fleeting nature of the landscape and phenomena as experienced, whether on a large scale or right down to the tiniest detail. Drawing helps me investigate and record a collection of images to be utilised later. These images can be of flickering light and shadow, abstract shapes or tactile textures. Lately I’ve become interested in the inner structures of rocks and minerals including meteorites.

-Linda Tawagi holds a Bachelor of Arts (Visual), Graduate Diploma in Library and Information and a Graduate Diploma Teaching (Secondary).

She has taught art to teenagers through the Messengers program in Tuggeranong, as well as to Secondary and College students in Canberra, and to adults through the University of the Third Age. Linda is a member of Artists Society of Canberra, and she has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions.

Image credit: Linda Tawagi XSection, 30 degrees 50 minutes south, 127 degrees 30 minutes east, 2019, graphite and gouache on canvas, 20 x 20 cm.

RUTH WALLER Waller’s series of works are jointly titled Fabulous Geologies. They are mixed media constructions: improvisations reflecting the quite overwhelming experience of spending time amongst the astonishing collected minerals, crystals, rocks and fossils at Geoscience Australia. Struck by the surprising and unlikely combinations of structure, surface and colour, Waller set about constructing “unlikely” 3D paintings, bringing together materials including balsa wood, polystyrene, seedpods, plastic with pigments, painting pumice media and canvas.

-Ruth Waller is recently retired as Head of Painting at ANU School of Art & Design and continues to work in Canberra. Ruth was born in Sydney and was long represented by Watters Gallery, Sydney. Works by Waller are held in national collections including those of the Australian National Gallery, Artbank, Canberra Museum and Gallery, the Drill Hall Gallery and several regional and university galleries.

Image credit: Ruth Waller Fantastic Geologies: Chimeric Figmentite 2019, acrylic on balsa wood 17 x 11 x 6cm. Photo: Brenton McGeachie.

ELLA WHATELEY Whateley’s practise explores the potential for two-dimensional artworks to mediate ambiguous spaces and places in pursuit of the mysterious and the metaphysical.

With a passion for inks and paper, her current work on paper references recent research conducted on residency at the National Taiwan University of Arts into traditional Chinese landscape painting and calligraphy using Chinese ink, brush and paper. The technique of making a print by rubbing, it is believed, was first used in 2nd century China to disseminate Confucian texts. Whateley included a form of rubbing as part of her hybridised response to the environment, and to ancient Taoist concepts of beauty in landscape and the sacred significance of rock, mountain, space, and water.

The opportunity offered by Geoscience Australia for artists to personally interact with specimens held in their collection, allowed Whateley a unique chance to experience the weight, substance and texture of the large, 4.5 billion year old meteorite from Henbury Meteorite Craters, and to see it, not only with her eyes but with her hands and body. Thought to have originated from the remains of the core of a small planet from the asteroid belt lying between orbits of Mars and Jupiter, radiometric dating indicates that this iron meteorite was formed at the same time as our Solar System. As one of the oldest known rocks to be found on the surface of the earth, the heart of the drawing, Marking Time 1, has been created by taking an imprint - a rubbing or frottage - of its sculptural mass. This process is an attempt to capture and interpretively translate something of the indexical properties of the object and leave behind on the paper a trace of a mass that originated in another time and place, and yet amazingly is present here and now.

-Ella Whateley is an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Fine Art Department, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University, Melbourne. In 2016 Whateley completed a practice-led PhD in the Painting Workshop, School of Art and Design at ANU; and during 2017 was a Vice-Chancellor’s Visiting Artist Fellow, School of Art and Design, College of Arts and Social Sciences working in collaboration with the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, ANU. In 2018 Whateley received a Taiwan Ministry of Education Short-Term Research Award to fund research into traditional Chinese ink and brushwork at National Taiwan University of Arts (NTUA), Taipei. This four-month

residency culminated in two solo exhibitions in Taiwan at the Australian Office in Taipei and at NTUA, and two in Australia in 2019, at the ANU’s Australian Centre on China in the World Gallery and another to be held in October at Fortyfive Downstairs, Melbourne. 

Image credit: Ella Whateley Marking Time I (detail), 2019 graphite, oil pastel, europeon ink, chinese ink on paper, 60 x 45.3 x 3cm.

CIERRA WILSON This work was inspired after Cierra and her Nan went to a talk and workshop at Canberra, at Geoscience Australia. Cierra found it very interesting and has had a love for rocks and crystals since she was young (Cierra is currently 13). She started on a piece of artwork while she was there with pencil drawings and taking photos for inspiration to continue when she returned home. Cierra attends art lessons in her local area and was inspired to continue her drawings from the Geoscience workshop. After some deliberation and consultation with her teacher she decided on a small canvas using water colour acrylics and practised this method at home. Geoscience Australia contacted the workshop attendees regarding an exhibition at the ANU, Cierra who was only 12 at the time was both excited and a little intimidated at the prospect, but decided she really wanted to do this and set to work. A couple of weeks later in her local art class, they were asked to present a piece of their work for exhibition at the end of the year at the Goulburn Mulwaree Civic Centre. Cierra made a decision to draw something that had inspired her from the workshop she had attended as it had been stuck in her head for a while. Cierra said to me “I’m really proud of myself and I love how it turned out .”

-Cierra is a 13yr old High School student who has been a creative artist since her preschool years.

Cierra currently attends Mulwaree High School in Gouburn where she is enrolled in Art . She also attends art lessons at the local Goulburn Mulwaree Art Gallery. Her recent work was exhibited at the Goulburn Mulwaree Civic Centre. She has a passion for anything creative and spends hours mainly drawing but also spins alpaca fleece, knits and uses any medium she can to reflect her imagination. Cierra has a desire to create in an environmentally friendly way and is a member of the Biodiversity Group in Goulburn and the Platypus Conservation group also. Giving her more experiences to draw on and express in her art and country.

Image credit: Cierra Wilson Water Crystal, 2018, watercolour and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 x 1.5 cm.

WEI-RONG WU To embody the dazzling character of Australian mineral ores, I aim to depict the static and dynamic quality of the specimens, an artefact of the lighting and shadows, through a combination of colour, texture and cultural elements.

Nine naturally-creased sheets of paper were painted and moulded into a representation of the collection of ores that I studied.

Together, the lines and nature-creases lead the eye and convey a sense of movement. The limited colour palate utilized emphasises the static character of ore.

-Weirong Wu was born in Shanghai, China and moved to Australia in the early 90’s where she has since been living and working. She is a graduate of the Painting workshop at the ANU School of Art & Design with a Bachelor of Visual Arts degree. She has presented works at the exhibitions “To Fly” and “Dreamland”, held in GAFFA and Gallery Klei, Sydney. She is currently working in a collaborative exhibition titled “Famer and Foreigner” at Sullivan and Strumph in Sydney Dec 2019. Weirong Wu’s work embodies the dazzling character of Australian mineral ores. She aims to depict the static and dynamic quality of the specimens, an artefact of the lighting and shadows, through a combination of colour, texture and cultural elements.

Image credit: Wei Rong Wu AMO I, 2019, watercolour ink on Xuan paper 50 x 50 x 4.5 cm.

NAOMI ZOUWER I was excited to explore the collection at Geoscience, as my art practice explores small personal objects and collections. The small specimens of Rhodochrosite, Smithsonite and Sulphur were captivating. Brightly coloured and delicately wrapped in tissue, kept inside small boxes with accession labels. They called me to paint them. I was drawn to the cyan, magenta and yellow in combination and felt that they provided a perfect opportunity to make a CMYK screen print.

-Naomi Zouwer is a Canberra based, cross-disciplinary artist. She works across drawing, painting and textiles mediums making works that engage with ideas of cultural heritage, identity and the social role of personal objects. Zouwer has exhibited widely in Australia being selected for drawing, painting and textile awards and exhibitions, including the Lethbridge Small Scale Award, 2018, the Kate Derum Tapestry Prize, 2016, and the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award, 2015. Zouwer recently completed a practice-led PhD at the School of Art and Design at the ANU.

Image credit (this page): Naomi Zouwer Rhodochrosite, Smithsonite and Sulphur 2019 screenprint, 20 x 20cm.

Image credit (right page): Smithsonite Latz Collection.

Photo Malcolm Southwood

School of Art & Design Gallery College of Arts and Social Sciences Australian National University http://soad.cass.anu.edu.au/gallery

Image credit: Liz Coats, Split Rock (detail), 2019, acrylic on linen, 70 x 73 cm.