Artworks Based on Entomology

Leonardo, Vol. 11, pp. 43-45. Pergamon Press 1978. Printed in Great Britain ARTWORKS BASED ON ENTOMOLOGY Denyse Gibbs* 1 . Implicit in artworks are certain underlying ideas. I shall attempt to make explicit those in mine that I have executed during the past five years since I completed my art studies. Many artists do not feel the need or they are not sufficientlyarticulate to write about their work. My decision to write this article was stimulated by a desire to communicate with other artists and toclarifymy work for myself. It seems to me that there are two factors of major influenceon thecharacter of an artist's work, in particular if it is of a figurativekind. The first of these is one's social milieu and the second, geography. While I feel the importance of both these factors, I am unable to determine which is of prime importance. For instance, what shapes British artists more, the fact that they belong to a relatively old culture or that they live in some particular area of the British islands? This uncertainty appliesto me as an Australian. For instance, I have noted that Britishlandscape artistswho came to Australia in the 19th century made paintings of the very different Australian landscape in terms of the landscapes they had known sowell in Britain. Even contemporary Australian artists, unlike those in older societies (I am thinking of those in Western Europe and North America) work more as isolated individuals. This is influential in two major ways. Firstly, they are not exposed to long established traditions or to the impact of a wide variety of artistic innovations, except through art publications. Secondly, their isolation induces Australian artists at some point in their careers to journey to Europe or North America to obtain a first-hand experience of developments there. This experiencecausesAustralian artists to evaluate their former work, sometimes with radical consequences in their subsequent work. I shall discuss here both the work I produced in Australia and that done later in Rome and London. My student work was concerned largely with selectedaspects of the Australian landscape. For example, I threaded eucalyptus tree leaves and hooked prickly fruits of the plane tree onto wires, glued the leaves of the Cootamundra wattle tree on a sheet of transparent plastic, etc. Strangely enough, it was what I took to be dead and discarded products of nature that I utilised in my art objects. I was especially interested in their subdued colours, which implied to me sterility or an unchanging aspect of vegetation. A viewer of the objectscould, over a long period of time, appreciate some relatively unchanging forms produced by nature. The prickly fruit of the plane tree changes very slowly with time, but eucalyptus tree leaves after being picked undergo rapid changes of colour, surface texture and odor. My idea was 'Artist, 22 Stafford Mansions, Stafford Place, St. James, London, S.W.1, England. (Received 6 Dec. 1976). to present nature in an artistic way that would lead viewers to a closer and detailed scrutiny of aspects of it under altered conditions. In a sense, these altered conditions might be considered similiar to those confronted by a plant physiologist. However, although I am interested in the scientific aspects'of nature, I am mainly concerned with its aesthetic manifestations. 2. My interest in plants shifted primarily to insects in 1972. I had been working in collaboration with some Australian entomologists, and this experienceconvinced me that scientistslook at form in nature from an aesthetic viewpoint,especially as regards the depictions they use to support their studies. I became interested in these depictions rather than in the appearance of actual specimens. The works that,resulted are a synthesis of this interest with my earlier fascination with plant products. I combined actual specimenswith depictions of them in the following way: A photograph of a pigeon was overlaid with a wing taken from a bird found dead and later treated by a taxidermist. By this superimposition, I introduced a relationship between a photograph of an animal and of an actual part of it, so that viewers are confronted by a visual experience that is difficult to ignore. A conjunction between image and reality is provided...