Sculptors get back to artistic roots
ART has a new home in the Cairns Botanic Gardens for the next five weeks as part of the
Cairns Botanica exhibition. The inaugural sculpture showing was opened to 16 sculptors who were challenged to use natural materials found in the botanic gardens.
Indigenous artist Delissa Walker took to the challenge, building a traditional gunya from paperbark and loya cane in the Gondwana Heritage Garden.
“It’s a traditional Aboriginal hut from my culture,” she said.
“My family’s from Mossman, the Kuku Yalanji tribe. I normally make baskets, so
“I thought OK, I can’t do a huge basket, so I’m doing a basket with the hut, with the story of my grandmother.
“She was put in a hut when she was a baby to hide her from the missionaries, and she taught me how to weave the baskets.
“So the basket is a big thing in our family, so I’m doing this for her.”
Friends of Cairns Botanic Gardens president Val Schier said the exhibition was just one way to get residents and visi- tors interacting with the botanic gardens. “If this grows in the future and becomes a biennial event, then we would hope that people from outside would apply for it, and then it would become another event on Cairns’ calendar every two years that people come here especially for,” she said.
Cairns Botanica is open to the public from 8am to 5.30pm daily until November 5.