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Collected Walks is an extensive series of photographed assemblage works created for Metro Tunnel Creative program in partnership with the Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens, comprising two large visual stories printed onto 200m of hoarding around the new Anzac Station site.
When making this particular section of the work (first image) I was thinking about the different types of people who might walk past the site and encounter this work and perhaps what they might add to these stories, like layers of memory. My kids always collect acorns and seedpods, a dog might pick up a stray toddler’s sock, someone else might find a lovely coloured autumn leaf or a branch swept down in the storm. I usually can’t resist buying a delicious treat from the baker over the road…. Using an instinctive process of collection and assemblage, these works are collated and arranged loosely by colour and form.
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Images 2-5 show the series of visual stories told by specimens and objects, including these ‘open case’ folders created after having special access to the the pressed and dried plant specimens in the Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens State Botanical Collection. These photographic collages take inspiration from the act of collecting and the personal stories attached to this process.
When visiting the Herbarium I was taken by the way the botanists refer to the ‘plant stories’ and how they are collected and added to over time, sometimes over a whole lifetime, like pieces in an ongoing puzzle. Some of the objects like seed pods and leaves were found (with permission) in the Botanic gardens themselves, some from around the site and some I made from ceramics or collected from local garage sales and even some precious treasures loaned from a family with Anzac digger relatives and treasures to accompany the pressed Flanders Field poppy.
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Photo by Bri Hammond 2021. Photography within the work by Matthew Stanton.