‘‘Botanical Art and Illustration Exhibition”, various artists (Olveston)
ON the way to view The Botanical Art and
Illustration Exhibition in the Drying Room at Olveston Historic Home, the visitor has the opportunity to walk around the right side of the Home (and art museum), through the gardens, before entering the room historically reserved for drying laundry, which is at the back of Olveston. The stroll through the gardens is a fitting prelude to the exhibition of botanical drawings by 15 local artists. As with the physical garden, the drawings feature a range of exotic and native plants, with the exhibition including plants and flowers such as griselinia, peony, delphinium, tiger lily, puriri, flax, mushrooms (not strictly plants), and fruit: lemon and mandarin.
In keeping with the tradition of botanical illustration, focus is attuned to the plant or flower isolated from its surrounding habitat. Some of the 53 works adopt the botanical practice of drawing different parts of the flower and its stages of growth alongside a larger drawing of the flower, or mushroom, in the case of Maria Wansink’s watercolour,
Agaricus muscarius. Wansink’s watercolour of the infamous, whitespotted red mushroom (technically a toadstool), intersperses pale parts of this genus between bright red, whole specimens: one bulbous and the other umbrellalike in form. Clumps of earth clings to the toadstools’ root systems, while the veil of one appears light enough to sway out from the stipe or stalk.
Open daily from 104pm until December 4.