Follow ArtInfo on FacebookReview: Plant life
"A Secret life of plants" on show at Linden, St Kilda until 17 May is in the end a rather odd show. The standout artists of this show Starlie Geikie and Jane Burton rise above the work provided by Luke Pither, Paul Gazzola, Rewi Lyall, Richard Giblett, Sally Ross, Simon Pericich and "selected Victorian Botanical Society artists". Geikie and Burton provide conceptually tight (even if in Burton's case quite simple but compelling) and well crafted work. Jane Burton provides 4 photographs, three modest in scale black and white C type prints with hand coloured (when was the last time you saw a photographer employ that technique!) images of pot plants in an austere and bureaucratic setting. An old desktop telephone, the black and white print and rope barriers informs the viewer that we are looking back in time. Upon talking with the artist later, she reveals the location as the former Stasi headquarters in Berlin. These half dead plants are the only signs of life. Geikie goes all hippy and alternative with obsessive drawings on ricepaper, drawn so as to appear like patchwork or 70s trick of the eye perspectival drawings. Her work references the art politics of hippy women of the 70s who called for a re-evaluation of traditional womens' crafts such as the quiltmaking and mosaics. Tight and abstract drawings deftly with a hint of the summer and some nice herbs. A step back in time of another sort. Another reworking of earlier times can be seen in the contribution of Sally Ross. Her work appears to be copies of illustrations of plants found in a book from the 1950s. The idea is very nice and scale perfect, the execution of the paintings needs to be more precise for this appropriation to punch through. For this viewer the rest of the work fails to captivate or convince. The choice of the smallest, very tiny room for the an anonymous artists of the Botanical Society is odd in exhibition layout terms and perhaps also politically, although their selection makes more sense than some of the other artists included in the show.
