Exhibition Insight... Botanica Exotica: Unknown Civilisations
Image: Eugenie Kawabata, Botanica Exotica: Unknown Civilisations #11 , 2024, fabric, resin, acrylic paint, dyes, composition foil leaf, 510 x 320 x 220 , Photo by Adrian Lander
Eugenie Kawabata:
Botanica Exotica: Unknown Civilisations
Independent Naarm/Melbourne-based designer and maker Eugenie Kawabata utilises her innovative practice to elevate textile waste into vividly coloured and highly textured vessels that showcase the transformative power of design.. With an emphasis on materiality and sustainability, Kawabata crafts contemporary design objects by stitching, dyeing, painting and impregnating discarded textiles with resin to transform them into objects of beauty and value. Her approach focuses on the tactile experiencer of crafting objects and emphasises the design process as a visceral hands-on endeavour.
In her latest solo exhibition, Botanica Exotica: Unknown Civilisations, Kawabata presents a new body of work that was inspired by the walks she took through Naarm/Melbourne’s parks and botanical gardens under the COVID lockdowns. Limited to venturing within a 5km radius of her home due to the restrictions, these walks became a daily ritual and escape from the drudgery of the city’s prolonged lockdowns. “The predictability and rigidity of the garden’s formal design led me to look at the disruptors within the Victorian design construct,” Kawabata says. “Messy, unbeautiful, untamed and unintentional.” Captivated by the visual dialogue between exotic and native plant life, she was particularly taken by the often-overlooked elements and tensions that coexistence presents: oozing resins and gums, scars and disfigurements caused by invasive micro-organisms, parasitic plants and exotic fungi. The vessels featured in this exhibition are manifestations of Kawabata’s botanical observations and provoke imaginings of what lies beneath the surface of plants: the complex unseen networks that form ‘unknown civilisations’.
Dripping with layers of contrasting pigmented resin, lustrous gold leaf, sharp protrusions and fungi-like growths, the brightly coloured vessels evoke the strange, almost alien-like forms of exotic plants and flowers. The works team with texture, colour and movement, hinting at the vibrant ecosystems that exist in nature on a micro scale within the unknown civilisations of the plant kingdom, whether it be in the curated collections of established botanic gardens or the lush jungle of an untamed environment. By inviting the viewer to examine the natural world at a micro level and challenge the disposability of everyday objects, Botanica Exotica: Unknown Civilisations asks us to consider the waste we create, the objects we value and the complexities of our interactions with nature.