Lani Shea-An

Gallery 2

Friday 9 June - Sunday 2 July

Opening Thursday 8 June 2023, 6pm - 8pm

A garden can be our own private world, a miniaturised version of the entirety of nature. A place where we can see our direct impact on, and within, a growing, living organism. As psychiatrist Sue Stuart-Smith writes:

“…even some people who do feel a strong connection with nature… and hike a lot in wild nature hugely underestimate the potential of a garden… those experiences have their own value, but they’re different from what a garden offers… the meditated space where we work out our relationship with nature, within the cycle of life.”

In mutual acts: ecologies of a garden, Lani Shea-An (she/her/they) depicts her own experiences of joy and wonder in nature, particularly in reference to what she has learned through gardening. Reflecting on her childhood, she recognises being largely oblivious to the plants around her. In this exhibition, Shea-An starts to trace her journey of connecting with the plant kingdom, beginning when she was a teenager and learning to grow vegetables.

This series of new works employs abstract and figurative painting, collage, and printmaking. The works shift back and forth, from reality to subconscious, to describe some of the emotions that a freshly harvested vegetable may invoke. Or the humbling experience of gazing up into the canopy of a mature eucalypt, and other sensitivities that were enabled by spending more time in the garden.

Featured

𝙁𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙧 𝙏𝙖𝙡𝙠 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙇𝙖𝙣𝙞 𝙎𝙝𝙚𝙖-𝘼𝙣

Join us for an inspiring artist floor talk with Lani Shea-An, the creative force behind the exhibition 'mutual acts: ecologies of a garden.'

Lani Shea-An

Lani Shea-An is a painter and mixed media artist living and working on Ngunnawal land. She studied painting at the ANU School of Art & Design from 2016 to 2019 including a semester abroad at Kyoto Seika University. She has also studied and worked in horticulture and seeks to integrate complex questions concerning sustainability into her arts practice. Referencing personal experiences and childhood memories, as well as contemporary nature writing, her work investigates an evolving human connection to land and enviroments.