This year’s Garden Art Month is set to entice visitors with a selection of outstanding exhibitions, Wednesday art-and sculpture walks, art classes and children’s activities.
A stunning start to Garden Art Month is the much-anticipated Artisans in the Gardens, showcasing established and emerging Australian artists and craftspeople, the exhibition will incorporate more than 2,000 artworks, including sculpture, ceramics, handblown glass, jewellery, textiles and more.
World-class botanical art will also feature in two major exhibitions: A Flash of Red by artist Jean Dennis and Botanic Endeavour, presented by the Florilegium Society. Inspired by Dennis’ first sighting of a red flower in an otherwise dry-brown bush in the Northern Territory, A Flash of Red will offer watercolours of parts of trees and shrubs of the Indigenous Brachychiton genus. The works were painted from living specimens over a 13-year period, with the majority of specimens collected by the artist.
The Florilegium Society is a self-funded, voluntary organisation dedicated to building a collection of contemporary botanical paintings of plants in the Gardens' Living Collection. The Society will be presenting the Botanic Endeavour exhibition of recent botanical paintings of plants that feature in the Living Collection and are also among the historic specimens collected by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander.
Marijke Gilchrist presents From the hive … swarming to The Calyx an exhibition of rich, luminous and ethereal qualities of encaustic paintings – created by fusing layers of beeswax, natural resin and pigment with a high heat source. The exhibition is a truly sensory experience of sight, touch and smell. These works capture the diversity of the Australian landscape – from the trees to the sea, with the outback in between.
Kids can get creative and make their own Magical Rainforest in a Jar, sessions held at all three Gardens, 12 & 13 April at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, 14 April at the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah, 19 & 20 April at the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan.
Join us for our Wednesday Walks and enjoy a special walk designed by our volunteer guides for Garden Art Month that brings our sculptures and statues to life. Learn about the artwork, artists and the how our attitudes to public art have changed over the last 150 years whilst visiting some of our more than 60 sculptures and statues.
Throughout Garden Art Month visitors can engage in the many tangible artistic representations of connection to plants and plant life.