Lyndal Osborne, Ornamenta, July 30 - August 29, Harcourt House

As previewed earlier this year for this touring show by Lyndal Osborne, I came to see the realized results on the freshly stripped floors of Harcourt House Gallery. As the first show to exhibit on the bare marine-coloured concrete floors, Ornamenta significantly draws your attention to the floor space to view Osborne's re-imagination of the genetically modified harvest.

Drawing a range of audience members from curators to farmers to her artist talk, Osborne's approach to art has increasingly turned towards an installation-based method that renegotiates fine art techniques into an often political contemporary practice.


Image credit: Detail from "Garden" Lyndal Osborne, 2005

Taking meticulousness to a whole new realm, the organic discards from Osborne's personal refuse has been painted, dyed, chine colled with lithograph drawings, painted, paper mached, and distorted beyond natural perception. Transformed to habitat in Osborne's modified ecosystem(s), these estranged roots, seeds, and pods are at once wondorous and alarming--much like their symbolic counterparts.

Building upon Osborne's persistent research into GMO's by bringing together Garden and Archipelago, curators Linda Jansma and Virginia Eichhorn allow for the artist as researcher to continue on a line of thought by encouraging the works speak back to one another.