Jane Guthleben’s paintings bring native flora to life: flowers and plants sit in vases, as Guthleben’s eye for colour and arrangements tell their histories. For her upcoming show in Brisbane, the Sydney-based artist is focusing on coastal plants and the sea around the region, tracing back to logs from Joseph Banks and James Cook’s voyage to Australia in 1770. “The reason for thinking about what they encountered on that voyage is to look at and consider what has been lost since colonisation,” Guthleben explains.

The show includes what Guthleben calls waterscapes and floralscapes: “an amalgamation of flora, where the land version of the water is the sky”. Seaweed and coral feature among land-based plants to give a panoramic view of the diversity of the region’s plant life—and how it has changed in 250 years. 

Guthleben has recently turned her hand to pottery, and some ceramics will be included in the show alongside the paintings. “In the last couple of years, my more elaborate compositions have included a make-believe vase that relates to or adds another window to something that I wanted to say about the place that this plant material is from,” she explains. When she began to learn pottery, it was to “add that personal element and actually create the painting, instead of just imagining it”.

With recent news about coral bleaching devastating the reefs in Queensland, the artist’s work is her form of protest. “I feel as an artist you get a tiny chance to say something, and what I would like to say in my painting is…something big, that will make somebody take a second look at what we can do, or how we can change.” 

SEA FLOWER
Jane Guthleben
Edwina Corlette
15—31 August

This article was originally published in the July/August 2024 print edition of Art Guide Australia.