Harvest

The exhibition Harvest was inspired by my involvement in a community garden near my studio in Marrickville. The exhibition comprised colourful bags, folded from monoprinted sheets of Japanese Kozo paper, and words carved into pieces of marine ply and found wooden objects. 

The patterns on the Kozo paper are the direct imprints of the leaves of plants that grow in the garden: sorrel, strawberries, sweet potatoes, morning glory, kale, squash and choko. On the completion of each monoprint I folded it into a sculptural, grocery-like bag. Some were placed on white wooden shelves, others clustered on a table.

For the wooden works I used my grandfather’s woodworking tools to gouge patterns, words and phrases into the grainy plywood surface. The words were gleaned and recorded while listening to fellow gardeners as we tilled the soil, planted our produce and harvested it. Fragments of phrases – nematodes, mushrooms, berry– emerge from the layers of plywood and the abstract patterning of the grain.