Tears of dust

Museum of Australian Photography, 2024

Janet Laurence’s immersive, multisensory installation Tears of dust reflects upon the fragility and power of the natural environment. Her intensely seductive and yet haunting evocations of the natural environment create encounters with our changing planet.

In this world premiere show, these wunderkammers (cabinets of curiosity) provide windows into our fragile ecosystem—of breathing forests, extreme weather events and dying glaciers—and offer a sense of connection with, and mourning of, our vanishing life world.

When encountering these familiar and yet otherworldly environments, we become profoundly aware of the interconnection of all life forms and the alchemical wonder of plants' ability to regenerate.

Show curated by Anouska Phizacklea
Photos courtesey of the Museum of Australain Photography

Requiem

Know My Name, National Gallery of Australia collection, 2020

Made in the wake of the 2019-20 bushfires, a hailstorm that shattered the glasshouses of the CSIRO and a global pandemic, this work draws together bleached, brittle, extinct, and endangered specimens. Titled Requiem, the work is a lament for a world in danger and a call for greater awareness of environmental issues.

Botanical specimens, branches, thread, gauze, seeds, bird and bat skeletons, burnt wood, glass vessels, mineral rocks, crystals, painted paper, sketch book, pigment, hand-blown glass, bird skins, nests, duraclear, inkjet prints, mirrors, mesh, sulphur-coated leaves, Chinese calligraphy, buffalo scapula, taxidermy owl, books, lenses

Curated by Deborah Hart and Elspeth Pitt

Palm at the end of the mind

The Johnston Collection, Melbourne, 2020

The Palm at the End of the Mind involves Janet Laurence’s exploration of the Johnston collection alongside her own creative practices - collecting and saving, nature and the environment - within the context of Fairhall exhibition-house. William Johnston’s own collecting and gathering from around the world, along with his love of gardening, underpinned and reflected Laurence’s ideas. Johnston found comfort, beauty and solace as he collected plants on his international travels, created, nurtured, assembled and loved his own gardens with care.

Items from The Johnston Collection, botanical specimens, branches, glass vessels, mineral rocks, crystals, painted paper, pigment, hand-blown glass, nests, duraclear, inkjet prints, mirrors, mesh, sulphur-coated leaves, books, lenses

Photography by Adam Luttick

Nach der natur

Museum Koenig, Bonn, 2019

‘The Museum Koenig holds a great treasure of monuments of nature. Museums of natural history not only present to us what we have, but also what we have lost- species and individuals. They equally show us which narratives and memories are still at our disposal. We are confronted with a sinister afterlife that provides us with lessons on our place in the community of life.’ - Dieter Sturma, 2019

Acrylic, scientific glass, taxidermy, other museum specimens

Curated by Dieter Sturma, photography by Thomas Gerken

Fugitive

Animate/Inanimate, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Victoria, 2013

Fugitive expresses our relationship to our fragile environment and an awareness that we are within the era of the ‘Anthropocene’. This ecological crisis demands us to shift our focus from a human-centred perspective to a broader multispecies, environmental approach, for how else are we to live ethically and find our place in this world.

Within the gallery space I want to bring us in to contact with the life - world. With a focus on the animals and their loss, I think about the loneliness of the last one of a species. What was their death? I wonder about their umwelt , the unique world in which each species lives.

Video, mesh, acrylic, steel, scientific glass, taxidermy specimens

Fugitive In Light

Eden and the Apple of Sodom, Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide, 2002

Video, mesh, acrylic, steel, scientific glass, taxidermy specimens