What the Sea Leaves and Fiery Embers are works created as a direct response to being affected by floods and bushfires in Australia and seeing first-hand the results of glacier melt during my artist residency in Iceland.

Both sets of works use paper pulp embedded with burnt leaves and ash which were washed up by the tides in northern NSW following the bushfires in early November.

What the Sea Leaves has been created using paper pulp from cotton sheets donated to flood affected families in Townsville which has been overlaid into remnants of a discarded fishing net sourced from my local Pottsville Beach.

Fiery Embers is made from pulped torn up papers which were damaged during the flooding of my Murwillumbah art studio in March 2017. This pulp was manipulated into sculptural installations using remnants from the same fishing net and includes crushed papers dyed with ink stitched onto a cloth strip torn from a hi-vis shirt and orange pulp made from this cloth. These reference the emergency service workers who are called to help during climate change disasters. This shirt was also sourced from donations to the Salvation Army in Townsville following the flood in early 2019.

These materials carry the energy of places affected by climate change. They are entangled into sections of the washed up fishing net which has been mended and re-mended. It is a metaphor for our planetary interconnectedness and speaks of the hopeful efforts to address and mend this climatic emergency.

Artist Statement: 
Paper forms the basis of my art, it is both my material and my passion. Much of my work features collages and folded artist books using my own handmade banana paper. In 2017 my papermaking art studio was flooded in the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie. This provided an opportunity to create work about climate change using flood affected papers.

Primarily I make paper with banana fibre from locally grown banana trees. I was one of three artists bequeathed the equipment and techniques to make banana paper from a retiring Japanese papermaker. He taught us the eastern method of making paper which is a one step process of drying paper on the mould without pressing it. 

While banana paper is my foundational medium, I also use cotton and fabric from recycled clothing and bed linen, especially to embed meaning into an art project. Choosing the type of fibre becomes part of the papers story. When making my most recent work about climate change I created paper from cotton workmen’s shirts and bed sheets donated to the families who were affected by floods in north Queensland. To this paper pulp I added soot and burnt leaf inclusions which were washed onto the beach after the rolling succession of Australian bushfires. 

Stitched paper collages connect me to my matrilineal lineage, but are expressed in the rough and imperfect, with loose threads often tangled and left hanging. These collages embed my thoughts to a time and place and have become my default artistic practice.

PRICE: $250

ART AVISO PROFILE

What the Sea Leaves and Fiery Embers are works created as a direct response to being affected by floods and bushfires in Australia and seeing first-hand the results of glacier melt during my artist residency in Iceland.

Both sets of works use paper pulp embedded with burnt leaves and ash which were washed up by the tides in northern NSW following the bushfires in early November.

What the Sea Leaves has been created using paper pulp from cotton sheets donated to flood affected families in Townsville which has been overlaid into remnants of a discarded fishing net sourced from my local Pottsville Beach.

Fiery Embers is made from pulped torn up papers which were damaged during the flooding of my Murwillumbah art studio in March 2017. This pulp was manipulated into sculptural installations using remnants from the same fishing net and includes crushed papers dyed with ink stitched onto a cloth strip torn from a hi-vis shirt and orange pulp made from this cloth. These reference the emergency service workers who are called to help during climate change disasters. This shirt was also sourced from donations to the Salvation Army in Townsville following the flood in early 2019.

These materials carry the energy of places affected by climate change. They are entangled into sections of the washed up fishing net which has been mended and re-mended. It is a metaphor for our planetary interconnectedness and speaks of the hopeful efforts to address and mend this climatic emergency.

Artist Statement: 
Paper forms the basis of my art, it is both my material and my passion. Much of my work features collages and folded artist books using my own handmade banana paper. In 2017 my papermaking art studio was flooded in the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie. This provided an opportunity to create work about climate change using flood affected papers.

Primarily I make paper with banana fibre from locally grown banana trees. I was one of three artists bequeathed the equipment and techniques to make banana paper from a retiring Japanese papermaker. He taught us the eastern method of making paper which is a one step process of drying paper on the mould without pressing it. 

While banana paper is my foundational medium, I also use cotton and fabric from recycled clothing and bed linen, especially to embed meaning into an art project. Choosing the type of fibre becomes part of the papers story. When making my most recent work about climate change I created paper from cotton workmen’s shirts and bed sheets donated to the families who were affected by floods in north Queensland. To this paper pulp I added soot and burnt leaf inclusions which were washed onto the beach after the rolling succession of Australian bushfires. 

Stitched paper collages connect me to my matrilineal lineage, but are expressed in the rough and imperfect, with loose threads often tangled and left hanging. These collages embed my thoughts to a time and place and have become my default artistic practice.

PRICE: $350

ART AVISO PROFILE

What the Sea Leaves and Fiery Embers are works created as a direct response to being affected by floods and bushfires in Australia and seeing first-hand the results of glacier melt during my artist residency in Iceland.

Both sets of works use paper pulp embedded with burnt leaves and ash which were washed up by the tides in northern NSW following the bushfires in early November.

What the Sea Leaves has been created using paper pulp from cotton sheets donated to flood affected families in Townsville which has been overlaid into remnants of a discarded fishing net sourced from my local Pottsville Beach.

Fiery Embers is made from pulped torn up papers which were damaged during the flooding of my Murwillumbah art studio in March 2017. This pulp was manipulated into sculptural installations using remnants from the same fishing net and includes crushed papers dyed with ink stitched onto a cloth strip torn from a hi-vis shirt and orange pulp made from this cloth. These reference the emergency service workers who are called to help during climate change disasters. This shirt was also sourced from donations to the Salvation Army in Townsville following the flood in early 2019.

These materials carry the energy of places affected by climate change. They are entangled into sections of the washed up fishing net which has been mended and re-mended. It is a metaphor for our planetary interconnectedness and speaks of the hopeful efforts to address and mend this climatic emergency.

Artist Statement: 
Paper forms the basis of my art, it is both my material and my passion. Much of my work features collages and folded artist books using my own handmade banana paper. In 2017 my papermaking art studio was flooded in the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie. This provided an opportunity to create work about climate change using flood affected papers.

Primarily I make paper with banana fibre from locally grown banana trees. I was one of three artists bequeathed the equipment and techniques to make banana paper from a retiring Japanese papermaker. He taught us the eastern method of making paper which is a one step process of drying paper on the mould without pressing it. 

While banana paper is my foundational medium, I also use cotton and fabric from recycled clothing and bed linen, especially to embed meaning into an art project. Choosing the type of fibre becomes part of the papers story. When making my most recent work about climate change I created paper from cotton workmen’s shirts and bed sheets donated to the families who were affected by floods in north Queensland. To this paper pulp I added soot and burnt leaf inclusions which were washed onto the beach after the rolling succession of Australian bushfires. 

Stitched paper collages connect me to my matrilineal lineage, but are expressed in the rough and imperfect, with loose threads often tangled and left hanging. These collages embed my thoughts to a time and place and have become my default artistic practice.

PRICE: $330

ART AVISO PROFILE

Every morning in 2018 I dipped a wooden spoon into a can of paint. Setting out on January the first I was sure of the process, the materials and the time frame.A spoon, a tin of paint, a daily ritual for one full year. Size was the great unknown.You would think that a little coat of paint wouldn’t be a thing of consequence? Similarly, 1.5 degrees isn’t a big thing is it? Each day in increasing astonishment I was witness to a swelling, cleaving, collapsing, geological, exponential, greedy, demanding growth. On one hand, the daily expansion of this work highlights the dangers of frightening, uncontrolled growth but as the year progressed there was joy. Joy in the sense of – ‘from little things big things grow’. There is hope if we work together. In unity there is strength. Change can be achieved with the smallest of daily actions.

Artist Statement:
I was born in Geelong and live in Melbourne, Australia. In the early 1980s I completed an Arts degree with a major in Philosophy. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I began doing art which has from the beginning included both oil painting and mixed media assemblage. Since 2014 I have mainly focussed on wooden sculpture and assemblage with occasional detours into conceptual territory. I was one of the founding members of 69 Smith St artist-run Gallery in Fitzroy in 1998. I currently volunteer at Yarra Sculpture Gallery. Over the last six years I have been a finalist and very occasional winner in various art prizes including The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, The Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Prize, The Substation Contemporary Art prize, The incinerator Art Award and the Yering Sculpture Exhibition and Awards. As I said, sculpture has been my focus of late but I would not be surprised if I return to painting in the future.

PRICE: POA

ART AVISO PROFILE

An artistic, visual and sonic representation of hard scientific data. Laser scans, point clouds and bio-acoustic recordings of endangered ecosystems are presented through an artistic lens generating an emotional engagement with climate data.

Society’s willful blindness to data is a core theme. This artwork immerses the viewer within mists of data cloud points and ghosts of real forests. By overlaying the real and memory, the work explores the liminal space between technology and nature.

Taking the viewer on a journey from blindness to sight and back again.

Produced in collaboration with scientists from the Terrestrial ecosystem research network (TERN)*. It uses massive datasets produced from 3D laser scanning of vulnerable native forests in Australia. These scans produce Cloud points, a mist of data and ghosts of the real.
The data is situated between the real and the virtual, ephemeral yet fixed by coordinates.

They are literal memories of environments that one day may disappear. They are nature as data.

*The goal of TERN is to provide open access for researchers to Australia’s land-based ecosystem monitoring infrastructure, data and research tools and thus contribute to a broader understanding and long-term sustainable management of Australia’s ecosystems.

Artist Statement:Nature as Data.

Nature as Data is a collective working with art, sound, science, environment and technology. As artists our objective is to translate scientific data about climate change in an emotional and imaginative way.

Artists:
James McGrath graduated as an architect in 1994 and lectured in design and digital visualization at the University of New South Wales. Over the last 20 years his paintings have been exhibited in London, Paris and Sydney. He also has trained as a painter by working as a studio assistant to the Neo-renaissance painter Patrick Betaudier in Paris and Arthur Boyd in Australia. His work is equally motivated by the inherent differences and tensions that the marriage of painting and 3D digital video engenders. For last 15 years he has been represented by Olsen Gallery, Sydney.

PRICE: POA

ART AVISO PROFILE James McGrath
ART AVISO PROFILE Gary Sinclair

I am a paper artist. This papercut is from a series about the Victorian coastal environment in Australia.

I live in the city of Melbourne. My previous papercuts were based on observations of the rapid change taking place in my surrounding urban landscape.

I regularly take a break from the city and visit the southern coast of Victoria to enjoy the regenerative powers of the sea.
However, I am observing changes taking place there, with rising tides and I fear that the relationship between the ocean and the land is being changed by climactic conditions due to global warming. The tides are higher and the coastline is rapidly eroding.
Studying the tidal ebb and flow of waves and the surf of the Southern Ocean has lead me, through my papercuts, to wonder at the sea’s majestic energy and beauty, and to consider the future of our oceans.

To make my images, I use a single sheet of paper and a scalpel to cut out shapes to create patterning. When mounted into a box frame, these papercuts of the sea cast mysterious soft shadows, while the white of the paper gives the effect of light on water.

I am a member of an international group called the Paper Artist Collective.
Recently my work was featured in a Thames and Hudson publication for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in a book called ‘Paper Crafts: A Makers Guide.’ (2018)
I have exhibited in Australia and overseas.