Minaal Lawn

Verdant is an exhibition of collaborative works presented by Minaal Lawn and Sarah Parkes as part of NGV Melbourne Design Week 2024. Minaal Lawn, working predominantly with ceramics, delves into themes of cultural identity and belonging through her practice located on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria. Sarah Parkes, living on Gunaikurnai Country in South Gippsland, knots and weaves narratives of place and home into her sculptural rope works. Together, they draw on the complex relationship they have to the rural landscape they inhabit, expressing this exchange of ideas through a series of works specifically created for Verdant.

The undeniable influence of the rural landscape, and its beauty, is explored both through material and narrative. Repurposed silage wrap (the green sticky plastic wrap used to contain silage or hay bales) is woven, puffed, pleated and wrapped, giving life to an otherwise waste material. Found farm objects (of which there are many) have been impressed into ceramic tiles, documenting their surroundings, its history, seeing it anew. The green of their daily surrounds, the sporadic lilac hues of grass seed and familiar motifs, such as the fence, the tree, form common reference points.

Navigating challenges of distance (270 kms between them), the local postal service, interrupted phone conversations and the demands of farm and family, their one face-to-face meeting amidst the entire creative process was a reminder of the value and necessity of personal connection.

Verdant merges not only the artists’ practices, but their personal topography of life and of quiet observations, while showing us how essential collaboration is to navigating new terrain.

This project was made possible by the Australian Government Regional Arts Fund, which supports the arts in regional and remote Australia.