Nic Brown, Forestal

Nic Brown, Forestal

Project launch (BYO picnic): 2pm Sunday 24 February 2013

Artist talk: 2pm Saturday 16 March 2013


Venue: Adelaide Botanic Garden, Mallee Section

(beneath Moreton Bay Fig, near East Gate)

The Adelaide Botanic Garden may seem like a strange space to hold an exhibition, but for Nic Brown’s exhibition Forestal, it’s perfect. This isn’t the first time she has exhibited within the gardens, which is reflected in the ease that her work fits in with its surrounds. Unlike in a gallery space, the gardens allow an open conversation between the work and its setting. Nic’s painting and installation work echo and respond to the Moreton bay fig they sit beneath, the trees that surround and the activities that occur within the gated forest.

Nic’s ghostly panoramas speak about the history of the Australian landscape; familiar and dream like, and a little bit uneasy. They are vistas within which one could become lost. The domestic and the wild come together within the installation, as logs are stacked delicately and with precision underneath an Australian pine table. She prompts conversations between trees (and logs, and wooden tables). Some of the trees in the botanic gardens are so old, and have so many stories and memories about our history. Forestal brings all these stories into the present; a history in flux, a dream like landscape.

Images: Nic Brown, Forestal, 2013, courtesy of the artist
Text: Copyright Adele Sliuzas, originally published in the thousands
http://thethousands.com.au/adelaide/look/nic-brown-forestal