It is certainly art; is it science too? In many ways yes, though that isn鈥檛 necessarily the artist鈥檚 primary intention. Holly Story explores how different ways of representing the natural world affect our understanding of it. But her works of art record such intimate details that they could be considered scientific investigations.
Story moved from England to Australia as a teenager and now lives in Deep River near Walpole in south-west Western Australia, a region of rich biodiversity. Her own experiences, and those of earlier settlers in an unfamiliar land, encouraged her to observe and investigate her new surroundings in order to create art with a strong sense of place. 鈥淲hen we moved to Deep River I began to see how beautiful Australia could be. I pressed flowers, bought a flower book and began to learn the names, and to understand the minuteness of the beauty.鈥�
One technique she uses is 鈥渘ature printing鈥�. It was developed by 18th-century artists who pressed plants into thin malleable sheets of lead, recording more morphological detail than can be drawn. Rather than print from the lead plates, Story rubs pigments into the indentations and exhibits the impressions. The pieces shown here, completed this year, show budding Hibbertia lasiopus (top), commonly called the prostrate buttercup, and Banksia grandis, or bull banksia. The flanking panels are imprints of her son鈥檚 hair.
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鈥淛ust as science only now is beginning to make sense of the strange and unique flora of this land, we need artists like Story to help us come to grips with valuing and understanding what lies before us,鈥� says Steve Hopper, Foundation Professor of Plant Conservation Biology at the University of Western Australia and director-designate of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London. Story鈥檚 work is on show at the Span Gallery in Melbourne until 7 October.