Botanica: Contemporary Art Outside
Discover Botanica
Discover a stunning open-air art exhibition in the heart of Brisbane City at Botanica - Contemporary Art Outside from 20-29 May 2022, in the City Botanic Gardens from 5-10pm daily.
As the sun sets over Brisbane's iconic urban skyline, Brisbane's City Botanic Gardens will come to life with large-scale projections, surprising installations and interactive artworks to captivate children and adults. Enjoy Botanica Live Nights on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings during the festival with additional activations, music, food trucks and an outdoor bar.
Botanica is a free event.
2022 Botanica expressions of interest now open
Botanica returns from 20-29 May 2022 and artist expressions of interest are now open.
For the chance to see your work featured in next year's event, apply now via the online form on Museum of Brisbane website.
Applications close at 5pm on Monday 6 December 2021.
For more information about this opportunity and to download the brief, visit the Museum of Brisbane website.
2021 artists and artworks
Botanica features new artworks from some of Australia's leading contemporary artists and designers. It explores the nexus of art and design practice and inspires conversations about our built, natural and digital environments. Explore the artists and artworks from the 2021 program.
Hiromi Tango
Heartbeat (2021)
Find out about Hiromi and her artwork
Find out about Hiromi and her artwork
Artist statement
Heartbeat transforms the kiosk in the heart of the City Botanic Gardens through a vibrant projection and textile installation.
In a year where we have all been affected by the stress and uncertainty of the global pandemic, Heartbeat creates an uplifting sensory encounter. The rainbow colours are a beacon of hope, optimism and life. Red, orange and yellow emanate warmth and energy, while blue and green create a feeling of deep calm and wellness. It is Hiromi's hope that Heartbeat will provide a moment of peaceful reflection and happiness for all who encounter it.
Materials: Mixed media, textile, neon, LED, light box, projection
Additional creative team
Kim Best (textile production), Wendy Mansell (editing), Craig Walsh (projection design), Steven Thomasson (projection design), Aaron Dora (project management)
Acknowledgements
The artist would like to acknowledge the Heartbeat support team - Kim Best, Ayuko Oba, Craig Walsh, Steve Thomasson, Aaron Dora, and Wendy Mansell, and everyone who is dedicated to humanity, nature and the arts.
Biography
Hiromi Tango is a Japanese-Australian artist whose work spans sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, projection and performance. Drawing on a life-long passion for gardening, she explores how our connection with nature — and spaces like the City Botanic Gardens — can generate calm, wellness and happiness amongst the bustle and stress of our contemporary existence.
Image credits
Top - Heartbeat (2021), Hiromi Tango. Photo: Dave Kan.
Bottom - Pictured: Hiromi Tango. Courtesy of the artist.
Simone Eisler
Museum of our lost world (2021)
Find out about Simone and her artwork
Find out about Simone and her artwork
Artist statement
Simone chose the formal flower garden as a site for her work for its symbolic power. As a highly designed folly in the shape of a flower, it reminds us that the City Botanic Gardens is a constructed space - a museum of nature that celebrates its diversity.
Now a lifeless ossuary of bleached cast skeletal remains of animals, fish and coral, the deathly site references the garden's early history as a zoo, but more importantly, our dangerous future. Simone sees this graveyard as a prescient foreboding of a dying world caused by the folly of human-induced climate change.
Materials: Cast gypsum
Acknowledgements
The artist acknowledges Perides Art Projects Brisbane, CSR Gyprock Trade Noosaville, her partner Kevin Wilson, her family, and all who have assisted with this installation.
Biography
Simone Eisler is an experienced Queensland sculptor with an extensive exhibition and public art profile in Australia and overseas. Garden themes feature strongly in many of her large-scale, immersive installations and are a platform for her to explore issues of climate change, species adaptation, family history and the diaspora.
Image credits
Top - Museum of our lost world (2021), Simone Eisler. Photo: Dave Kan.
Bottom - Simone Eisler. Photo: Kevin Wilson.
Esem Projects (E/P)
Superorganism (2021)
Find out about E/P and their artwork
Find out about E/P and their artwork
Artist statement
Step inside the canopy of the Tipuana Tipu tree. Lie down, look up and listen in to past, present, and future sounds of our fragile and complex ecosystems.
Informed by the ideas of James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis, Superorganism resonates with a vast spectrum of founds from natural to artificial, from historical recordings to machine intelligence.
Taking place at a pivot point in the history of our planet, during an era of mass extinction and loss of biodiversity, Superorganism invites audiences to reflect on what we are losing, what we gain by paying attention, and what uncertain futures lie ahead.
Materials: Audio and light installation, steel, soft furnishings
Additional creative team
Nigel Cruikshank (synthesisers and sampling), Rose Grayson (vocals), Leif Wilson (technical design), Pete Hird (sound engineer and installation)
Acknowledgements
The artists acknowledge contributions from scientific thinkers, recordists and creative advisors who have supported and inspired the making of this artwork. Field recordists featured include Vicki Powys, Andrew Skeoch, George Vlad and John Hutchinson.
Biography
Led by Dr Sarah Barns and Michael Killalea, Esem Projects (E/P) is a multi-disciplinary media arts practice, whose work addresses our changing relationships to space, place and ecology in a hyper-connected digital age.
Image credits
Top - Superorganism (2021), Esem Projects. Photo: Dave Kan.
Bottom - Pictured: Esem Projects. Courtesy of the artists.
Paul Bai
On Top of the World (No. 3) (2021)
Find out about Paul and his artwork
Find out about Paul and his artwork
Artist statement
On Top of the World (No. 3) has several conceptual dimensions. Firstly, it responds to Piero Manzoni's 1961 sculpture inscribed with the words "The Base of the World, Homage to Galileo" — placed upside down in a field in Herning, Denmark.
As Australia is often regarded as the 'bottom' of the world, this artwork challenges the definitions of 'top' and 'bottom' in the context of spatial positions.
The work underlines humanity's struggle with orientation in the world, suggesting to be 'on top of the world' is to be on the ground, and directly connected to the earth.
Materials: Chalk on grass
Acknowledgements
Courtesy of David Pestorius Projects and the artist.
Biography
Paul Bai was born in China and has lived and worked in Brisbane since 1989. Bai's cross-discipline art practice spans painting, video, photography and installation and builds upon the tradition of 1960s conceptual art. He has exhibited professionally nationally and internationally since 1996.
Image credits
Top - On Top of the World (2021), Paul Bai. Photo: Dave Kan.
Bottom - Pictured: Paul Bai. Courtesy of the artist.
Charlotte Haywood
Here + Now(2021)
Find out about Charlotte and her artwork
Find out about Charlotte and her artwork
Artist statement
What are the 'signs' in the landscape?
What smells, sounds or sights keep us present, signalling the time of day, season, a moment in an ecological cycle, or our interconnection?
Drawing our attention to the thresholds of time and place, Here + Now asks through what lens do you see the significant pointers in our landscape?
The work is a whacky blend of pop botanica, 'utopia' and phenomena. It highlights the authority of Indigenous ecological knowledge, the democratisation of science through agency, and the significance of the relationship between community and ecology. Its goal is to highlight nature's equity that nurtures all.
Materials: Bamboo, LED, neon light, plumbing clamps, steel
Additional creative team
Gerry Turpin (Consultant. Senior Ethnobotanist, Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre, James Cook University)
Acknowledgements
To the Jagera and Turrbul Peoples of Brisbane City, and all Traditional Owners across Australia and the Torres Strait whose authority of ecological knowledge is paramount, Charlotte offers your her deepest respect.
Title inspired by Aldous Huxley's Island (1962).
Biography
Charlotte Haywood is an experimental, interdisciplinary artist who explores themes and practices from pop to the primordial. She seeks cultural and linguistic nuances of the body and the landscape to decrypt and unfold multi-narratives in an act of decolonising the self.
Interview
Interview with Gerry Turpin - Here + Now - Signs in the landscape
Join Gerry Turpin, Mbabaram Elder and Australia's lead ethnobotanist from the Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre, Australian Tropical Herbarium, James Cook University, Cairns, explaining the importance of Indigenous ecological knowledge and seasonal calendar plants.
Charlotte has worked in close consultation with Gerry in the development of her artwork Here + Now for Botanica.
Citizen Science Program - ClimateWatch
ClimateWatch's Citizen Science program is the collaborative brainchild of Earthwatch Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology and the University of Melbourne. Join one of ClimateWatch's founders, to discuss phenology, or the study of the different life stages of plants and animals (e.g. flowering, fruiting) to understand how changes in climate (temperature, rainfall) are influencing the seasonal behaviours of different species.
Charlotte invites audiences to participate in ClimateWatch's Citizen Science project as an extension of her artwork Here + Now for Botanica.
Image credits
Top - Here + Now (2021), Charlotte Haywood. Photo: Dave Kan.
Bottom - Pictured: Charlotte Haywood. Photo: Kate Holmes.
Jenna Lee
Breathing Spaces (2019)
Find out about Jenna and her artwork
Find out about Jenna and her artwork
Artist statement
Through acts of understanding, deconstruction and reconstruction, Breathing Spaces looks to recontextualise historic words about public spaces, to include knowledge of place long known as truth to First Nations Peoples.
By deconstructing the words of historic texts and rearranging them into a poem that includes First Nations' understandings of nature, water, place and space, this work hopes to weave perspectives back into the public knowledge of the area.
While diving into history can sometimes cause heartache, this works aims to demonstrate how understanding and reflecting on our collective past, we can take the newly dissected parts and create something new and beautiful.
Materials: Projection
Additional creative team
Sai Karlen (motion graphics and multidisciplinary designer)
Biography
Jenna Lee is a mixed-race Larrakia, Wardaman and Karajarri, Asian (Japanese, Chinese, Filipino) and Anglo Australian woman whose contemporary art practice explores the transformation of the colonial printed word through the ritualistic acts of analysis, destruction and reconstruction, seeking to translate the page into a new tangible language.
Image credits
Top - Breathing Spaces (2021), Jenna Lee. Photo: Dave Kan.
Bottom - Pictured: Jenna Lee. Photo: Jade Florence.
Kellie O'Dempsey
What did you say? (2021)
Find out about Kellie and her artwork
Find out about Kellie and her artwork
Artist statement
On the epidermis of a tree's leaves, microscopic pores called stomata exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. The world 'stomata' comes from the Greek word 'stoma' meaning 'mouth'. What did you say? reimagines a tree's stomata as the mouth through which the planet breathes.
Some mouths breathe with ease; others struggle to catch their breath; a silent few are deathly still. Viewers are asked to listen and engage in deep, conscious breathing, to be present in the moment, to connect, consider and rest.
Using augmented reality, projected imagery and a soundscape of breathing, the artwork responds to our strange and ever-shifting social and environmental climate.
Materials: Projection and sound installation with augmented reality animation.
Additional creative team
Helena Papageorgiou (augmented reality), Michael Dick (sound)
Biography
Kellie O'Dempsey develops site-generated installations that incorporate sound, animation, light, video and sculpture. O'Dempsey hybridises these elements to generate artworks that are experiential and emergent. Creating in both solo and collaborative formats, her diverse practice investigates notions of transformation and the absurd through improvisation and happenstance.
Image credits
Top - What did you say? (2021), Kellie O'Dempsey. Photo: Dave Kan.
Bottom - Pictured: Kellie O'Dempsey. Courtesy of the artist.
Georgie Pinn
Ripple (2021)
Find out about Georgie and her artwork
Find out about Georgie and her artwork
Artist statement
Ripple is an immersive audiovisual experience that is projection-mapped on the lagoon surface. As the audience navigates through the physical transformation of water via a touch screen, from ice to vapour (fear to truth), they experience different metaphors for the states of human emotion.
The work explores water as a metaphor for the subconscious, linking interactive animation and sound to the expressions of the audience, nurturing empathy for nature and highlighting the vulnerability and strength in shared human emotion.
On the weekends, the installation will be accompanied by roving performances from Theatre of Thunder and a musical Acknowledgement of Country from the electro/hip-hop music duo, Kairos Kin.
Materials: Interactive audio-visual installation
Additional creative team
Simon Burgin and Johnathan Crowe (creative and technical support), Remo Vallance (design for fabrication), Tom Marxon (engineering), James Clark (audio engineering and system design)
Biography
Georgie Pinn has two decades of experience working as an artist, director and producer of interactive public cultural events. Her work combines immersive technology with installation, narrative, film, animation, theatre and sound. Pinn's creative practice is underpinned by her long-term research into empathy as a creative force for making connections across cultural, age and gender divide.
Image credits
Top - Ripple (2021), Georgie Pinn. Photo: Dave Kan.
Bottom - Pictured: Georgie Pinn. Courtesy of the artist.
Georgia Hillas
Aim Higher (2021)
Find out about Georgia and her artwork
Find out about Georgia and her artwork
Artist statement
Palm Circle is temporarily transformed into a public sports arena, reminiscent of the historic use of the land it encircles.
Aim Higher invites everyone to shoot netballs into macrame hoops mounted at various heights ranging from achievable to unrealistic — uniting audiences from diverse demographics on a level playing field. In contrast to the historical inequalities for women in sporting and art domains, Aim Higher manifests a symbolic, ideological space of parity.
The work represents women throughout history who have utilised their crafts to aim higher than society deemed reasonable; to stride closer towards equality with traditionally masculine domains.
Materials: Netball rings, cotton macrame, rope, netballs, Cuban royal palms (Roystonea regia), hammocks, UV black lights, neon dye, textiles and other materials
Acknowledgements
This work has been generously facilitated with support from QUT. Georgie thanks Charles Robb, Ivy Trove and the artist's family and friends who generously volunteered their time.
Biography
Georgia Hillas is a Brisbane-based visual artist who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in 2019. Growing up as an elite athlete, Hillas draws upon personal experience and mass media to inform her practice which navigates the marginalised history of women in sport.
Image credits
Top - Aim Higher (2021), Georgia Hillas. Photo: Dave Kan.
Bottom - Pictured: Georgia Hillas. Photo: Claudia De Luca.
Photo gallery
View photos from this year's Botanica - Contemporary Art Outside open-air exhibition in the slideshow below, or in our Flickr album.
More information
For more information for Botanica, you can:
- phone Council on 07 3403 8888
- email the project team
- write to:
Botanica
Brisbane City Council
GPO Box 1434
Brisbane Qld 4001.