Beauty Displaced

When people are displaced, it’s usually not by choice but instead an enforced departure from their homes. This was the case with the majority of arrivals in Tasmania in the early 1800’s. Most came with little hope of return and searched for symbols of their homelands to appease a yearning. Newly planted gardens were a relatively easy way of re-establishing familiar beauty into their displaced lives. European plants such as foxgloves and tulips, were grown as a thin veil over the messy, unruly and unfamiliar native landscape in Tasmania. In this work, the beauty of the flowers have been exaggerated, as often memory dictates, and have been carefully and laboriously drawn, as if the time and care of tending to the garden allows a disengagement from the actual environment itself. This idealised landscape plan has then been laid over a base drawing of quickly applied ink washes depicting the chaotic and disordered nature of the indigenous bush. Together they form a transparent, fragile and familiar beauty over the strength and truth of the antipodean homeland.

Julie Payne

2019

Coloured pencil, paper, ink and brush wash on paper