Just wild about the flora: the women who captured native blooms … for the inside
‘It is only when the mind opens that flowers bloom’ claimed Kathleen McArthur, whose pioneering artworks of Aussie wildflowers were a source of inspiration for a show now on at Redland Art Gallery.
Kathleen McArthur was a luminary Queensland-based artist and writer whose pioneering legacy, along with that of friend and fellow environmental trailblazer poet Judith Wright, are celebrated in an exhibition of “wild flowering women” at Redland Art Gallery.
The exhibition Wildflowering by Design notes the importance, functional role and aesthetic qualities of Australian wildflowers. Exhibition curators Sue Davis and Lisa Chandler dubbed McArthur (1915-2000) and Wright (1915-2000) “wild flowering women” because “they loved wildflowers and the wilds of nature, and were also fiery, ‘wild’ and difficult in ensuring those environments were protected”.
Since 2016, exhibitions of “wild/flower” women have been staged across South-East Queensland with artists including Indigenous custodians whose guidance stimulated a new group of “wild” environmental crusaders.
Wildflowering by Design is an extension of this original concept in its integration of local artists at each venue.
The exhibition at Redland Art Gallery gathered local artists at the Canaipa Wildflowering Retreat on Russell Island, in July 2024, where they engaged with the island’s ecology, opening their eyes to previously imperceptible native flora.
‘Now that I am a wild/flower woman my eyes are trained to see the hidden sanctuary provided by nature’s design’
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Artist Siobhan Demeester describes the opening of her mind, along with her eyes, during this process, writing: “I loved the simplicity of the small white flower. Before the wildflowering retreat I would never have noticed this special delicate gem … Now that I am a wild/flower woman my eyes are trained to see the hidden sanctuary provided by nature’s design.”
In each of these artistic responses the unique qualities of Australian flora are traced and extended – with wallum, acacia, ungaire reeds, Xanthorrhoea, banksia and swamp orchids found on Quandamooka Country – from artists including Demeester, Sonja Carmichael, Beverley Jensen, Sharon Jewell and Meg Spratt.
Work by artists included in the original exhibition – Kathleen McArthur, Renata Buziak, Rose Barrowcliffe, Donna Davis and Nicole Jakins – profile critically endangered flora, bunya, mangroves and other species from South-East Queensland.
Buziak fuses art with science in a series of colourful biochromes that are immersive in scale, “portraits of life’s vast cycles of death and renewal” from the Granite Belt.
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Jakins’ sculptural works are stoneware forms that hybridise animals with plants, the unity of fauna with flora from her memories of “birds stirring in amongst the understory of grevillea, olax and ferns”. Some of these works draw on dyes and materials from nature.
Joolie Gibbs makes inks from botanicals, imbuing her work with impermanence that parallels the cycle of life and speaks to the meditative quality of spending time in nature.
Redland Art Gallery has recorded blockbuster audiences (in Cleveland terms). For Redland City Mayor Jos Mitchell, Wildflowering by Design “highlights the power of art to deepen our connection with the environment—whether through the delicate beauty of wildflowers or the resilience of life in urban spaces … and celebrate creativity, culture and our deep relationship with the land”.
Its themes have been sympathetically paired with a solo exhibition by LeAnne Vincent, who is clearly a wild/flower woman. Her exhibition, Inhabited: Anthromes of Queensland, responds to the “emotional anxiety” induced by the absorption of her childhood landscapes (in northern NSW) by the Pacific Motorway. Vincent now lives in Ipswich where she produces anthromes (anthropogenic biomes) as circular layered and printed fabrics, printed with motifs that combine the natural with the human-made, stitched to evoke the layering and intermeshing of these responses in our urban lives.
Vincent’s Into the Fray (2024) uses shadows of tree roots, feathers, leaves, snake skin, a gecko and flowers with patterns of netting, plastic bottles, saws and blades, overlaid in a form that evokes a thought bubble into our distracted urban melee.
Vincent created it “immersed in the uncomfortable sounds of excavators, jack hammers and saws invading my studio from the construction site next door; this work also speaks of my own perceived powerlessness”.
“I became fascinated with how small fauna—like insects and reptiles—survive in human-altered landscapes,” Vincent writes. “I hope to encourage people to look closer and consider how our actions shape these environments.”
Both exhibitions draw attention to the intricate aesthetic and environmental qualities of our unique flora, and elevate a delicate aesthetic to celebrate the often unseen beauty that may exist close by outside – no matter where you live.
Wildflowering by Design and Inhabited: Anthromes of Queensland continue at Redland Art Gallery, Cleveland, until June 3.
artgallery.redland.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/exhibitions-2025/wildflowering-by-design