Above/Below is a group exhibition by artists who are inspired by their love of ferns, fungi, lichens, liverworts, moss, hornworts and algae. The 30 works are a diverse range of media from textile art, botanical illustration, jewellery, photography, ceramics and mixed media. Each artist has studied and then interpreted a cryptogam for this exhibition.
Opening Hours | Daily 9.30am – 4.30pm
Entry to this exhibition is free | No bookings required
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Julie Ryder is a textile designer and artist who has gained international recognition for her work. Originally trained in science, she retrained as a textile designer in 1990, and completed an MA in Visual Arts (Textiles) from the ANU in 2004.
Julie has established a dye garden to grow and extract the pigments she uses in her work and regularly runs workshops in natural dyeing and screen printing from her studio. She has taught in tertiary institutions, community organisations and workshops for over 30 years and has been the recipient of many awards, grants, commissions and residencies. Her work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, National Museum of Australia, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Art Gallery of South Australia, Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, CSIRO, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Tamworth Regional Gallery, Megalo Archives and RMIT Archives.
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Jo Victoria is a Canberra based ceramic artist with a love of the ocean. Her works are inspired by cultural and natural landscapes and ocean shores. She mixes organic materials with porcelain slips to create delicate, translucent, often haunting works that speak of deep time and the precariousness of life on earth.
Jo completed her Master of Visual Arts degree at the ANU School of Art in 2016 and has exhibited in group and solo shows in the ACT and region, the South Coast and in Denmark.
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Sharon Peoples has worked as an artist in Canberra for more than 25 years, exhibited nationally and internationally as well as taking on commissioned work.
In 1994 she completed a Master of Visual Arts at ANU, a graduate diploma in Curatorship and Art History at ANU (2004) and then graduated with a PHD in 2009 in Art History, writing a thesis on gender and fashion theory. In 2016 she picked up the threads of her visual arts practice and her work focuses on both hand and machine embroidery.
She has had 11 solo exhibitions since 2010, the most recent were the Highest Tree, Avid Gallery, Wellington New Zealand, Working the Garden (2023) at the Southern Highlands Art Collective and Messenger from the Garden (2020) at Timeless Textiles in Newcastle.
Sharon has participated in over 20 group exhibitions – the highlights being the latest Seed Stitch Contemporary Textile Award (2022) at the Australian Design Centre, Sydney, Surface and Depth (at the Palazzo Velli Expo, Rome 2021) and Stitched Art is Art both with the SEW (Society for Embroidered Art), the Art Textiles Biennale (2021) at the East Gippsland Art Gallery and the Australian Fibre Art Award (2021) at Gallery 76 in Sydney.
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As a multimedia artist Brenda Runnegar specialises in painting, sculpture, photography and textiles. Her 40-odd-year-long practice is characterised by the use of the surreal and dreamlike. Her exquisitely detailed and quietly confronting work is inspired by the natural world and explores the complex vulnerabilities and strengths of the human condition.
She has worked variously in the arts and crafts and began as a Textile Artist in the 1970s whilst living in London and studied at the Stanhope Institute. She completed a Master of Fine Arts by research in 2007 and has worked professionally as an educator, arts administrator, gallery manager and project manager in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. Since 1981 she has exhibited in numerous prestigious group exhibitions and has had 18 solo exhibitions. Her most recent work has involved re-examining the use of textiles and soft sculptures (art doll making) and digital imaging.
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Karin’s work is inspired by her background as a marine biologist: the microscopic shapes and forms she observed while working as a scientist in Antarctica. Her love of story-telling and her interest in the role of adornment in ancient cultures led her to combine science with art to promote the beauty and importance of these creatures.
The jewellery Karin creates embodies her sense of nature’s preciousness. By bringing nature into our personal and intimate space, she hopes it quietly encourages us to reconnect with and value the natural world.
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In 2009, shortly after COP15 in Copenhagen, Sharon resigned from her government employment, which included several years with Australia’s aid program in Africa and the Pacific to pursue a career as a full-time botanical artist. With 20 years of experience as a volunteer fire-fighter, she has witnessed ecosystems in crisis and has become increasingly concerned about human impacts on the health of our planet’s environment.
Her passion for botanical art grew in parallel with her deepening interest in environmental issues. Sharon’s artwork has strong environmental themes, and it has won awards both in Australia and overseas.
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Jack Buckley is a multi-disciplinary artist based on Gadigal land in Sydney, Australia. Jack's work explores the complex world of the Australian environment, with particular focus on the relationship between organic and constructed domains. A scientific inspired illustrative process combines with delicate embroidered subjects, creating meticulously detailed works which consider the nature of overlooked and unknown worlds.
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Emma is an animation and illustration specialist with over 25 years' experience.
She has covered many aspects of animation, from 3D and computer games, tv series and works for iOS applications, feature films and traditional hand drawn short films.
Emma completed the Victorian College of the Arts postgraduate diploma in Animation in 1994 before commencing her professional career, she has undergraduate training in Graphic Design but illustration is also an integral part of her art practice. Focusing on scientific and detailed natural history subjects has had her drawings and artwork exhibited widely including being selected as a finalist in the SA Museum Waterhouse Science Art Prize and receiving a Highly Commended for the illustration "Lichen World - Golden Moonglow".
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Self-taught award-winning artist Natalie Maras draws on her research background in arts and science to inform her practice. Since 2010, she has engaged audiences with sculptural works in polymer clay. Novel research and technology enable Natalie to explore and artistically interpret hidden worlds, normally appreciated only by scientists.
Her career includes a residency at the CSIRO National Collections exploring organisms at the microscopic interface of earth and air and a period as Honorary Guest at the Australian National University Department of Archaeology and Natural History, where she was researching the surface coatings of microscopic pollen grains. Her work on biological soil crusts was exhibited in the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize. Her work has been featured in major public institutions such as the National Museum of Australia, the National Dinosaur Museum, the National Arboretum, and the Shine Dome in Canberra. Her pollen sculptures appeared in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney.
Image Credit: Julie Ryder | Fungi, 2024 | Image courtesy of the artist