Jenny Crompton phyto
Jan 25 - Feb 23 2025
Jenny Crompton
Concerned with the growing pressures imposed on the natural world, Australian artist Jenny Crompton creates effervescent sculptures that ignite environmental awareness and personal reflection. The works delve into the world of organisms and creatures, taking the viewer on an otherworldly journey through nature. Despite any hint of melancholy, her works are also celebratory.
They seem to float, weightless, oranges, scarlets and crimsons bursting from webs of shell and remind us of the sheer bounteous nature of this planet. But these environs she so clearly cherishes are under extreme peril.
Despite the imperialistic shrugs of indifferent developers and conservatives, the world, under our own hand, is changing at a catastrophic rate. There is, accordingly, a degree of melancholy underscoring her work. Crompton’s creatures, with their vibrissae protuberances, extended receptors, decorative flourishes and peering eyes created an entire tribe of fantastical entities.
By utilising nature as a core of their practice she lights a flare of warning and ignites a fire of recognition of the natural world.
In 2016 Jenny won the Sculpture Trail Award and Peoples Choice Award at the Lorne Sculpture Biennale. She has exhibited at National Gallery of Victoria, Craft Victoria, MARS Gallery, Biennale of Australian Art and held work is held in collections including the National Gallery of Victoria.
PHYTO
Phytoplankton means ‘drifting plant.
Derived from the Greek words phyto (plant) and plankton (made to wander or drift).
Phytoplankton are microscopic unicellular organisms that drift with the currents, carry out oxygenic photosynthesis, and live in the upper illuminated waters of all aquatic ecosystems, both salty and fresh. One litre of seawater can contain between 100,000 and 100 million phytoplankton cells.
Like land plants, phytoplankton have chlorophyll to capture sunlight, and they use photosynthesis to turn it into chemical energy. They consume carbon dioxide, and release oxygen. All phytoplankton photo-synthesize, but some get additional energy by consuming other organisms. Phytoplankton biomass in the world’s oceans amounts to only 1-2% of the total global plant carbon, yet these organisms fix between 30 and 50 billion metric tons of carbon annually, which is about 40% of the total.
When conditions are right, phytoplankton populations can grow explosively, a phenomenon known as a bloom. Blooms in the ocean may cover hundreds of square kilometres and are easily visible in satellite images. A bloom may last several weeks, but the life span of any individual phytoplankton is rarely more than a few days.
Phytoplankton are the foundation of the aquatic food web, the primary producers, feeding everything from microscopic, animal-like zooplankton to multi-ton whales. Small fish and invertebrates also graze on the plant-like organisms, and then those smaller animals are eaten by bigger ones.
Phytoplankton can also bring of death or disease. Certain species of phytoplankton produce powerful biotoxins, making them responsible for “red tides,” or harmful
algal blooms. These toxic blooms can kill marine life and people who eat contaminated seafood.
Worldwide, phytoplankton is a massive biological carbon pump transffering about 10 giga-tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere to the deep ocean each year. Even small changes in the growth of phytoplankton may affect atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, which would feed back to global surface temperatures.
Hundreds of thousands of species of phytoplankton live in Earth’s oceans, each adapted to particular water conditions. Changes in water clarity, nutrient content, and salinity change the species that live in a given place.
This exhibition is an ode to phytoplankton and its importance to life on earth.The role of phytoplankton photosynthesis in global biogeochemical cycles.
P G Falkowski
What are Phytoplankton?
By Rebecca Lindsey and Michon Scott
NASA Earth Observatory
Sales:
Julie Collins - Director gallery@djprojects.net
0417324 795
Free deliver and installation anywhere in Victoria.
Shipping arranged interstate and Overseas.
21 Morce Ave Sorrento, Victoria, Australia
www.andgalleryaustralia.net
& Gallery is part of the djprojects family of art related businesses. www.djprojects.net
1. Algae Flower
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
65cm x 65cm framed
$2,800
2. Red Algae 2
255 x 255mm
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
$660.00
3. Red Algae 1
255 x 255mm
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
$660.00
570 x 760mm
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
$2,200.00
4. Dinoflagellate 7
350 x 400mm
$1,320.00
5. Dinoflagellate 1
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
350 x 400mm
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
$1,320.00
6. Dinoflagellate 2
350 x 400mm
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
$1,320.00
7. Dinoflagellate 3
400
Painted , copper wire and solder with glass beads
$2,400.00
8. Valvia 2
x 300 x 230mm
450 x 470mm
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
$1,320.00
9. Coccolithophore 1
10. Phytoplankton
970 x 820mm
Acrylic Ink on canvas
$4,620.00
450 x 470mm
$1,320.00
11. Coccolithophore 2
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
400 x 300 x 230mm
Painted , copper wire and solder with glass beads
$2,400.00
12. Valvia 1
380 x 570mm
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
$1,450.00
13. Dinoflagellate 4
750 x 1050mm
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper
$2,800.00
14. Dinoflagellate 6
380 x 570mm
$1,450.00
15. Dinoflagellate 5
Acrylic Ink on watercolour paper