The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney has reached its bicentennial and to celebrate has filled its calendar with a number of public events, celebrating its history and accomplishments. Established in 1816, it is the oldest botanic garden and scientific institution in the country with an encyclopedic selection of plants from around the world, particularly Australia and the South Pacific.
“One of the primary functions of a botanic garden is to grow as wide a range of plants as possible. As a botanic garden ages, it becomes a repository of living history. The significance of the Florilegium is that it portrays plants grown over the past 200 years of the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney in a contemporary way, each artist personally interpreting their subject without sacrificing accuracy. The Florilegium Society at the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, Sydney places the Garden among a handful of leading institutions worldwide that are developing modern Florilegia and engendering a revived interest in botanic art as a serious artistic pursuit.”
– Colleen Morris, curator of ‘Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden’
The Florilegium Society, formed in 2015, set up an anthology of contemporary botanical paintings, reproducing plants within the Gardens and the Domain Trust’s living collections. Comprised of established botanical artists whose works adhere to scientific accuracy and historical documentation as well as an individual response to each subject, the Florilegium Society have spent the last ten years creating this unique collection in time for this year’s anniversary festivities. The result, ‘Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden’, an exhibition curated by Colleen Morris and Beverly Allen showcasing eighty plus paintings from 19th century wildflower watercolours by artist Gertrude Lovegrove to the work of sixty Australian and international contemporary artists including Beverly Allen, Tanya Hoolihan, Angela Lober, Lesley Elkan and Annie Hughes. The majority of the artists are Australian with others from the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, the USA, Canada, France and New Zealand.
‘Florilegium’ celebrates the botanical and horticultural development of botanical art and its influence on the Gardens and its surrounding areas – domestic gardens, public parks and landscapes of New South Wales – since 1816. The exhibition represents the Garden’s inception through recent illustrations of vegetation around Farm Cove in 1788 and the specimens collected and catalogued by botanists and superintendents Charles Fraser and Allan Cunningham. Their expeditions across the State resulted in the discovery of hundreds of plants.
The exhibition continues its historical overview with the inclusion of introductions by Charles Moore and J H Maiden through to late 20th century scientific work. From the Norfolk Island Pine, sighted by Captain Cook in 1774 and planted by Lachlan Macquarie in the Gardens in 1814, to the prehistoric Wollemi Pine, dating back 200 million years but only discovered in 1994 and planted in 1998, the paintings provide a detailed account of the Gardens’ diverse living organisms.
Hung on the walls of the Museum of Sydney, a forest of paintings create an environment similar to the Gardens themselves, an opinion expressed on opening night by Tim Entwisle, former Executive Director of the Botanic Gardens Trust, “It’s like a walk through the Botanic Gardens where everything is flowering and fruiting at the same time – it’s amazing! It just never happens like that, but it is happening here in these rooms.”
From common domestic garden flowers to endangered species, from indigenous Australian plants to unfamiliar exotic variety from Asia, the Americas, Africa and Europe, the exhibition is grouped in sections – Exploring, Experimenting and Exchanging; Gardenesque Effects; Romance of the Rainforest; Remarkable and Interesting; and Cooler Climes – accompanied by descriptive text, quotations, photographs and videos. ‘Florilegium: Sydney’s Painted Garden’ is as much educational as it is an opportunity to view the skill of these botanical artists, their high level of detail and expertise.
Visitors can see some of the botanical artists at work with demonstrations inside the exhibition space on the first and third Sunday of the month: 7 and 21 August, 4 and 18 September, 2 and 16 October, 10.30am-2.30pm.
The Florilegium Society has published a 224-page publication highlighting the 200-year history of Australia’s first botanic garden – The Florigelium. Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney. Celebrating 200 Years: Plants of the Three Gardens of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust. Coloured templates of eighty-seven paintings grace its pages accompanied by scientific descriptions of each plant. The volume records the development and regeneration of each plant in relation to each period of the Garden’s history.
Museum of Sydney
Until 30 October, 2016
Sydney
© Jenny Phillips, Magnolia grandiflora (Bull bay or souther magnolia), 2015
Courtesy the artist and The Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust
