Helen Mueller has been printmaking for 25 years, but moving to Hobart four years ago saw a shift in her focus. “It’s been a huge consciousness exercise, coming to Tasmania,” she says. “I’ve become completely aware of the beautiful natural environment but also the weight of the history it carries. It’s kind of like a petri dish of the rest of Australia, its history is much more palpable than on the mainland.”
Living near a nature reserve, she began walking there every day, collecting materials from the forest floor—foliage, seeds—to bring back home and use in her work. “I try to replicate, or explore, the rhythms and repetitions, the light and shade, of things I find in the forest. The interactions with materials is what drives the process.”
It is important to Mueller to use sustainable materials—woodblocks cut from radiata pine construction ply, which prints foliage forms onto kozo paper made from the inner bark of a mulberry tree. With these creations showing at Handmark Gallery, Mueller notes the paper is extremely delicate: “It ends up being almost ink suspended in air. In a way, it reflects that connection with the forest that I walk in. It requires care, it is delicate and threatened. It’s a mirror of my subject matter.”
It has been important for Mueller, in working with and within the natural environment, to pay her respects to the First Peoples of Tasmania. “I’ve had the privilege of meeting the original custodians of this land and walking with them on Country, getting to glimpse through their eyes what the land means to them.”
In turn, she hopes her art can encourage others to look outwards, and explore what is around us. “The wellness industry wants us to go into nature because it’s good for us. I’d rather flip the narrative and say, how should we be tending our natural environment? Let’s give it a voice.”
forest stories
Helen Mueller
Handmark Gallery
On now—4 November
This article was originally published in the September/October 2024 issue of Art Guide Australia.
Suggested Reading
The ceramics of the Central Desert
Developed in 2022 by Artback NT as part of Apmere Mparntwe—the Australian Ceramics Triennale— touring exhibition Clay on Country, showing now at New England Regional Art Museum, showcases the diversity of ceramics in the Central Desert.
Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
About Face mirrors the alluring world of contemporary portrait painting
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
Jane O'Sullivan
Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana and inherited influence
In Anmatyerr artist Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana’s first solo exhibition in Melbourne—which focuses on the Central Desert food source Arnwekety (bush plum)—the influence and love of her Country and culture is palpable. Elizabeth Mbitjana Pitijana is now showing at Niagara Galleries.
Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
Ivan Cheng on innocence lost
Anador Walsh reviews Ivan Cheng’s performance exhibition NP at Monash University Museum of Art—a three-day project, made in collaboration with a group of Year 11 students, that explores the loss of childhood innocence and role of documentation in performance.
Anador Walsh
Angelica Mesiti’s The Rites of When finally makes sense of the Art Gallery of NSW’s Tank. It is worth the plane flight.
In The Rites of When, Angelica Mesiti considers the rituals that may mark the seasons in our burning planet. The Tank has been waiting for art like this.
Joanna Mendelssohn
Melbourne Art Fair announces 2025 line up
Melbourne Art Fair has announced its 2025 line up, with 60 galleries and Indigenous art centres slated to feature alongside some major international commissions and public programs.