Exhibition by contemporary Australian artist Anna Glynn

September 6 - 26, 2019

The Museum of New Art in partnership with the Matsalu Nature Film Festival present ‘Marooned’, a series of compelling, intimate, thematic installations by Australian artist Anna Glynn. These works address nature, ecology, history and environment, embracing art as a way to pursue meaningful conversations and exchanges.

'Marooned' comprises a suite of environmentally thematic installations, reinforcing current universal ecological discussions through the ephemeral qualities of moving image and diaphanous attributes of textile elements in the form of photomontage on chiffon: semitransparent, transient and, as nature is, delicate and fragile. The exhibition includes newly-created works by Anna Glynn that result from recent international, interdisciplinary art and ecology projects with Australian scientist Peter Dalmazzo, as well as works shown at the 2018 Biennale of Australian Art. The suite of works includes the following.

‘Art of Threatened Species Project - Marooned’
The Art of Threatened Species project focuses on the Mt Kaputar Snail and Slug Threatened Ecological Community in Australia. The community includes all that is on the mountain peak of an extinct volcano. To create ‘Marooned’ for this, Glynn has hyper-coloured all the elements of the environment in this antipodean wonderland, using vibrant hues pulsating in pink and green in homage to the most notable creature and the hero species which is a giant, pink slug that occurs nowhere else in the world. The only element that Glynn has left in its natural colour is the unique pink slug.

'Swan Song'
‘Swan Song’ is a large-scale, photo-montage, chiffon installation exploring the relationships between man, nature and the human endeavours to transform the Australian landscape through a European aesthetic. Created through research into historical references and public documents which tell a story in which white swans were imported from all over the world, including Rome and England, to adorn and ‘civilize’ the antipodean landscape. The native Australian black swans were exported and removed in a post-colonial ‘tidying’ and reordering.

‘Swan Saga’
‘Swan Saga’ complements ‘Swan Song’ with a wallpaper design created using archival text, 1883-1961, embedded within the silhouette of a large swan. The contents of this work are only revealed upon close inspection, like a disjointed conversation over time.

‘Grass Mountain’ and ‘Svampar’
Two moving image works that are the result of a recent, interdisciplinary ‘Art, Ecology & Science’ collaboration commissioned by ARNA/Sweden which took place over a two-month period at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology/USA and ARNA/Sweden. ‘Grass Mountain’ and ‘Svampar’ dive deeply, submerging into the landscape, the flora and fauna. Frank Boyden, founder of the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology describes ‘Grass Mountain’ as… “a nuanced layering of kaleidoscopic densities. Translucent films of light are overlayed each carrying different information. Warm and cool, light and dark, focus and out of focus, stationary and moving, recognisable and unrecognisable…another way of realising the depth of biologic relationships. This is what art is supposed to render.”

Anna Glynn - Artist
Anna Glynn is an award-winning Australian artist, who creates visually poetic work investigating the connection between humans and nature, land and place, the physical and the ephemeral. Nature, history, ecology and the environment are essential elements of her practice and integral to her work with curiosity being a key component and driver.

Peter Dalmazzo – Biologist
Peter Dalmazzo is an environmental scientist with extensive experience working in the fields of marine and terrestrial biology, estuarine and coastal management, environmental planning and assessment, public place planning, community engagement and education.

Glynn and Dalmazzo
Through interdisciplinary collaborations Glynn and Dalmazzo carry out international art and ecology projects. Outcomes of their recent collaborations include award winning short films, exhibitions, installations, online material and public presentations. ‘Above and Below,’ a moving image work that resulted from a collaborative residency undertaken in the Dry Tortugas National Park USA, was acquired by the Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra, Australia.