ROBYN SWEENEY

To come to this body of work for Tree, I come from a position of loss. As a self-confessed ‘solastalgic’, I pine for lost trees and bush.

Everything about this body of work makes reference to loss through memory, iconoclasm, nostalgia and irony.

The works are framed around some of the visual idioms of my formative years: the kitsch Faux Wood-grain paneling covering the real Baltic Pine walls of a Sydney home; Comics printed with the Ben-day Dots technique; my Grandmother’s Flow Blue transfer-ware decorated with pastoral scenes; mysterious religious icons glimpsed in the homes of childhood friends; Salvador Dali on schoolroom walls and Gothic illustrations in an odd collection of hand-me-down childhood reading matter.

My ‘full of the wonder of nature’ childhood paved the way for environmentalist sympathies. I have witnessed extraordinary change since my 1950s childhood, with the spread of cities, industries and settlements taking over places once described as ‘the bush’.

For all that progress gives us, it is a double-edged sword, which causes an unpleasant disturbance when I see abuse of our dwindling natural environment.

Even with quantifiable scientific proof, Environmentalism is often dismissed as hysterical Leftism or quasi-religious hocus-pocus, however; indications that our planet is one complex organism are being discovered through scientific research. One such finding is the transmission of information from one tree to another by way of fungi conduits.

I am both supported by communication on environmental issues with others through information exchange on the Internet and equally challenged to accept opposing opinions. This causes anxiety, which could be eased by ‘logging off’ but I can’t ignore being frequently confronted with damage by vandalism to my local environment. So when I feel a bout of solastalgia coming on, I go find a nice tree and give it a big hug.