Project Overview

Seaweed Arboretum is a suite of 3 installations, exhibited at the Manly Art Gallery & Museum. The exhibition was held in conjunction with the Seaweed Forests Festival, and provided an evocative and immersive marine botanical environment for the month-long program of talks, workshops and events.

The installations, Forest, Flora and Float, draw upon the seaweed forests of Australia’s Great Southern Reef. Forest is an aerial canopy of giant bull kelp sourced from the Southern Ocean; Flora is a series of pressed seaweeds collected from the shores of the eastern and southern coasts; and Float suspends seaweeds gathered from Sydney beaches - viewed against the backdrop of their ocean home immediately beyond the gallery.

The installations honour and celebrate the inherent nature and integrity of the plants themselves. Throughout the process of collecting, sculpting, and installing the works, the seaweeds exerted a defining and determining influence. The installations are, in essence, the expression of a collaboration between artists and marine plant-life.

The poetics of this intra-nature dialogue imbued the festival program. Talks, discussions and workshops were held beneath and within the installations - and explored our interconnected relationship with seaweed through the manifestations of science and climate change; Indigenous culture and knowledge; food and health; art, dance and music.

The exhibition and festival developed out of a long-term collaboration with marine ecologist, Dr Adriana Verges, Associate Professor at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW, and the Sydney Institute of Marine Science (see Operation Crayweed Art Work Site). Artists and scientists are inherently curious and creative, and many share a deep connection to the natural world. Art and science offer different expressions of this connection, that can be both complementary and expansive when combined. In sharing scientific research within these poetic and sensory art environments, seemingly separate systems of knowing are cross-fertilised to foster a more open and receptive understanding for all.

This project was supported by NSW Government My Community Grant and Australian Kelp Products

Flora

Seaweed Arboretum – Flora is one of a suite of 3 installations, along with Forest and Float, exhibited at the Manly Art Gallery & Museum. The exhibition was held in conjunction with the Seaweed Forests Festival, and provided an evocative and immersive marine botanical environment for the month-long program of talks workshops and events.

Flora is a marine botanical collection of delicately ethereal seaweed pressings. Each specimen is suspended within a clear acrylic box frame, hung slightly out from the gallery wall. Their intricate forms are replicated in a precisely cast shadow on the wall behind. This shadow-life opens a dialogue with its own being - and invites us, on the other side, into the intimate reverie.

Included in this marine botanical arboretum of aqueous plant life are:

• Cystophora retorta
• Phyllospora comosa (Crayweed)
• Ecklonia radiata (Golden Kelp)
• Caulocystis cephalornithos
• Seirococcus axillaris
• Codium fragile
• Codium platyclados
• Hypnea sp
• Delisea pulchra
• Durvillea potatorum (Bull Kelp)