Artisans Celebrating 21 years

CARVING A PATH TO ARTISANS 2022

AN ALLURING COLLECTION OF OLD FRIENDS AND EMERGING TALENTS WILL COME TOGETHER THIS YEAR TO CELEBRATE ARTISANS IN THE GARDENS’ 21ST BIRTHDAY. SUE WANNAN REPORTS.

Every year Artisans in the Gardens organisers set out on a difficult task − to expand or enhance in some way an already immensely successful and popular exhibition. Every year, without fail, they deliver.

This year’s innovation is a sculpture walk, running from the back of Growing Friends Plant Sales, through the normally inaccessible Stone Yard to Lion Gate Lodge, where Artisans is held.

“People can make a day of it,” says Libby Wright, Artisans’ new curator in this its 21st year. “They can admire the gardens, visit the always popular Growing Friends, stroll along the sculpture walk, lunch at Lion Gate Lodge, and spend time in our rooms and garden.”

In preparation, the Garden’s staff are already clearing out the area along the walk, making it suitable for some large, impressive works.

“For instance, Maria Fernanda Cardoso is submitting a series of six carved sandstone rocks,” says Wright. “It’s a real coup having someone of her calibre at Artisans (see page 18 for more).

“At this moment, we‘re still planning what we’ll put there, the lighting, those sorts of things. We might not get to the peak this year, but it’s a wonderful way of linking Garden elements, so people can learn a little more about what’s going on.”

As always, helping people understand and engage with “what’s going on” in the Gardens is an important facet of Foundation & Friends’ mission.

Exhibition Project Manager, Julia Sparkes, says Artisans not only brings people to the Garden, it also gives them an opportunity to “take a bit of the Garden home with them.”

“And it offers art that reflects the gardens in an amazing and incredible but also accessible way,” says Sparkes.

“Money that Foundation & Friends raises goes back to the Gardens, and over the years we’ve donated millions of dollars to support projects such as the digitisation of Herbarium specimens and The Calyx. Being able to raise a couple of hundred thousand dollars in nine days through Artisans is pretty incredible.” ARTISANS ACTIVITIES Artisans in the Gardens exhibition will feature demonstrations, classes and events, including: an art class with Araceli Adams, who runs a ceramics studio, Casa Adams Fine Wares, and also makes one-of-a-kind ceramics a not-to-be-missed Artisans Spring Walk High Tea on Saturday 29 October (2pm–3.30pm) featuring a sumptuous and carefully curated menu a ceramic art class with Isabella Edwards, with a focus on creating artwork based on favourite places and memories morning and afternoon tea with Artisans curator Libby Wright

Growing Friends extended hours, Sat 29 October–Sun 6 November, 10am–4pm (Sat–Sun) & 11am–2pm (Mon–Fri). For more information, see this issue’s Diary, page 30.

Asahi So Marthess Harrington

Serena Owen

Niharika Hukku

MEET THE ARTISTS

Artisans in the Gardens always aims to entice art lovers with works that delight and surprise, and curator Libby Wright believes this year’s exhibition will once again exceed expectations.

“We have 44 artists showing all sorts of work: textiles, ceramics, jewellers, a glassmaker, sculptors, indoors and outdoors, from the tiny to the magnificent,” says Wright. “We always say, we’ve got something from $20 to $20,000.

“Because it’s our 21st year, we’d hoped to get 21 artists who’d been with us before, one from each year. Getting one from each year proved not to be possible, but we do have 21 who’ve shown with us before.

“It’s a very vibrant exhibition, with lots of colour.”

Following is just a small selection of the artists invited to take part in this year’s exhibition.

‘We have 44 artists showing all sorts of work’

Sharon Peoples' gardening gloves

Maria Fernanda Cardoso

THE ‘COUP’ Maria Fernanda Cardoso is one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Foundation & Friends’ members have probably seen her 11-storey-high mural, Ripples & Droplets, on the side of 116 Bathurst St in Sydney, or perhaps The Tree of Life in the foyer atrium at Westmead hospital, While I Live I will Grow in Green Square in Sydney, or more recently, the 110cm-long and 550kg sandstone Pollen outside the new National Herbarium of New South Wales at the Australian Botanic Garden.

Her bibliography requires 12 closelyspaced pages, involving print, radio and exhibitions literature, covering Australia, Colombia (where she was born), the United States and the United Kingdom – and that’s just the last 18 months.

Cardoso says she is fascinated by the natural geometry of the world, and growth and form in nature.

Sharon Peoples

INNOVATIVE ACADEMIC Dr Sharon Peoples is a mild anomaly in the artist world. She has a PhD in art history and for 20 years has worked as a university academic and an artist.

Peoples has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas, and her work is included in national and state institutions. Her pieces at Artisans 2022 are an eye-catching series of spades and shovels with working handles but embroidered spade components, and gardening gloves made of embroidery.

After initially studying interior design, Peoples married and raised a family, then returned to art school to complete a masters using embroidery. That lead to a PhD and a career in academia.

“In about 2016/17 I just let [academia] all go and worked solidly on my art career,” she says.

“During COVID I was gardening and looking at my old gardening gloves. Being an embroiderer, I’ve always had to protect my hands. I also researched gloves, where the word comes from, how they were used in the past – in Elizabethan times, for instance, they were an important gift.

“I thought about that, and about gardens – my own, and the local bush reserves and national parks – they’re all essentially gardens, they’re looked after, things are weeded out, cared for. And I started to apply the imagery from those gardens onto gloves.

“I’ve had a long association with gardens. For me, they’re spaces of retreat, of inner life. The shovels, the trowels, the gloves reflect the physical and mental labour that are required of gardens.”

PROVEN PERFORMER Sydney-based sculptor Denese Oates has been exhibiting for more than 30 years and this year will mark her fifth appearance at Artisans in the Gardens.

In 2017 her sculptures formed a topiary series on the lawn, with several rounded forms of copper wire, all intertwined like vines, sitting on top of each other in a big stack.

“My new work is trees,” says Oates. “Copper lends itself to them, the vines and trunks and branches and leaves. The main one I’m showing is what I call a mystery tree, not based on any particular tree, just out of my head.

“There’ll also be several smaller free-standing works, all based on or inspired by nature, as my work always is.”

Oates’ art school major was in painting, but she says her works had “a 3D aspect, coming out of the canvas.

“I switched to handmade paper, which allowed me to work in even deeper relief, but I still kept wanting to come out further from the surface. Then I saw an inspirational show in Adelaide − metal furniture done by artists − and I was blown away. I started working in metal and loved it.

“I work in an old produce barn next to my house. It can be sparky and hot and dirty when I work with oxy acetylene doing the silver soldering to join the copper. And quite noisy at times when I’m angle grinding. But I love it.”

Denese Oates

Asahi So

EVOLVING TALENT Asahi So works with ceramics and wire, and at Artisans this year will exhibit pod-inspired bud vases, ceramic floral-work domes, pod and seedheadinspired sculptures, and a series of botanical “scenes” consisting of stylised seedheads, buds and blooms presented under glass domes.

So initially worked as a florist but became concerned about sustainability issues in floristry, such as the “heartbreaking” waste associated with event flowers, and the practice of bleaching, dying and chemically preserving flowers.

On a whim, he did a part-time ceramics course at Hornsby TAFE, which eventually led to an advanced diploma in ceramics.

“My work is an attempt to capture something of the ephemeral nature of living plants and render it permanent,” says So.

“I don’t try to recreate individual species but take elements and influences from a range of plants, reinterpreting and recombining them. I hope to intrigue and delight people by presenting familiar elements in ways not found in nature, giving them a new context.

“I use a variety of techniques… for the work that combines ceramic components with wire, I use a technique called knotless netting, where the wire structure is formed one loop at a time, by hand.

“Because I work with wire as well – not many people are working as I do, to my knowledge – it's caught people’s eye and enabled me to get my work out there.”

EDGY AND PASSIONATE Niharika Hukku is a ceramics artist who will this year take part in her third Artisans exhibition, contributing some eye-catching bowls that feature swimming fish.

“Like looking into a little pond that you can hold,” Hukku says. “Also, birds that I have photographed in my garden. And plants... a little garden inside, almost like they’re growing on top of the ceramic.

“My work is an expression of what I find elegant and beautiful in my world.”

Hukku – who was born in India and has lived in Indonesia, Singapore and New Zealand – has exhibited in various galleries and her work is held in private collections as well as in the Gold Coast Gallery in Queensland.

“I started painting on ceramics because I was looking at the sky and thinking it is so blue – how can I capture that? It’s so hard to get that colour. Living in different countries you always assume the sky is blue, but when you move to Australia it’s a very different blue, almost fluorescent. I wanted to bring it inside the house.

“And I love fish, but how can I keep them alive forever? How can I capture the light and the play of light, the movement, and keep it near me to stay with me forever?

“Things are fleeting, almost moving, ever changing…”

Niharika Hukku

UP AND COMING Isabella Edwards is only in her 20s, recently graduated with a masters from the National Art School, and is someone you should keep your eye on.

She exhibited in Artisans last year but says this year’s work will “be a lot more grounded, more urban.

“Last year was about fantasy, we were stuck in lockdown, I was painting from books. This year I’ve been out and about, taking photos, painting from that.

“The main thing that draws me is light. I’m fascinated by backlighting and watching the light stream through trees. My work could also be based around what was happening when I was in that place, maybe having a bad day, but getting off the train to a beautiful sunset.”

Edwards says she shares many of the sentiments that began with Impressionism.

“I have a great love of the everyday. It’s very special. I really disagree with the statement that small things amuse small minds – if you can’t be amused by small things, almost nothing in life is going to make you happy.

“Last year being in Artisans was important to me because there were no shows happening, and Artisans was a big highlight. It was such a boost to my confidence. I don’t know if it helped my career in the traditional sense, but it helped me stick to my career.”

29 OCTOBER–6 NOVEMBER, 10AM–4PM

Lion Gate Lodge, Royal Botanic Garden Sydney Entry is free, and all works will be for sale, with commission going towards a range of programs across the Botanic Gardens.

OPENING NIGHT, FRIDAY 28 OCTOBER, 6PM–8PM Join us at this year’s opening night, during which you’ll have a chance to browse and purchase artworks before the doors open to the general public. The ticketed event will also provide an opportunity to meet this year’s artists and curator Libby Wright, while enjoying a glass of wine and some delicious canapés in historic Lion Gate Lodge. Tickets cost $65 for members and $75 for non-members. To purchase tickets visit botanicgardens.org.au/What-s-On