2017
Catalogue / Memoir
Introduction
Pictures
Objects
Animations
PICTURES are both finished and ephemeral works made for animations.
1949---- 1950---- 1951---- 1952---- 1953---- 1954---- 1955---- 1956---- 1957---- 1958---- 1959---- 1960---- 1961---- 1962---- 1963---- 1964---- 1965---- 1966---- 1967---- 1968---- 1969---- 1970---- 1971---- 1972---- 1973---- 1974---- 1975---- 1976---- 1977---- 1978---- 1979---- 1980---- 1981---- 1982---- 1983---- 1984---- 1985---- 1986---- 1987---- 1988---- 1989---- 1990---- 1991---- 1992---- 1993---- 1994---- 1995---- 1996---- 1997---- 1998---- 1999---- 2000---- 2001---- 2002---- 2003---- 2004---- 2005---- 2006---- 2007---- 2008---- 2009---- 2010---- 2011---- 2012---- 2013---- 2014---- 2015---- 2016---- 2017---- 2018---- 2019---- 2020---- 2021---- 2022---- 2023---- 2024---- 2025---- 2026----
Ways of seeing
I am six when I sit beside my father on the back steps of Talisman, our home in Kallista. We look together at the English garden and native bush beyond the fence. He says, "In nature there are no lines, just changes in tone and colour between things". I recogise that way of seeing from the paintings around the house, paintings by his granddad Tom.
Then I think about my mother working at the kitchen table, burning lines into wood. Lines like cellular structures known from science about the evolution of Earth. Lines that describe microscopic and macroscopic forms in nature. Lines that indicate movement and connection between things. Mum burns lines in wooden boomerangs made by Bill Onus who runs the shop, Aboriginal Enterprises, where she works.
That's my earliest memory of different ways of seeing,
and the different forms of truth and beauty.
1920s My father Noel on Talisman steps
Photo by Tom, or his son Caleb (my grandfather)
Artist's collection, Sydney
2017 Casuarina Living Data
450mm x 920 mm.
Oil on cotton duck
Rebecca Gibb collection, Canberra
2017 Transformation Journey
Acrylic on cotton duck
Ex Eora Aboriginal Art show
Private collection, Sydney
At Eora TAFE I study Aboriginal Cultural Arts with Chico Monks, and trace with lines my genetic ancestors: phytoplankton (microscopic plants) that transform sunlight into energy that sustains Life, and Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), keystone creature of the Southern Ocean.
Chico's studio at Eora stirs memories of Bill Onus's Aboriginal Enterprises studio where mum worked. Both are places where people connect through making art and telling their stories. At home I would sit with mum at our kitchen table and draw. I also drew on walls around the house, inside and out, using charcoal from the fireplace. Mum showed me how to mix and use paint, and ways to make small sculptures out of 'rubbish'. I watched as she worked with a "red hot poker" to burn designs into wooden boomerangs that Bill had made. She guided my child's hand to "write with fire" on scraps of wood.
2017 Every second molecule of oxygen I breathe
Acrylic on cotton duck.
410mm x 510 mm
Ex Eora Aboriginal Art show
Private collection, Sydney
This is the first painting I did as a student of Eora College. Chico Monks was head of Cultural Arts and encouraged everyone to find our own ways to identify as artists. I painted the circle to represent both a microscopic and a global view of myself as part of nature, and painted words and other images to express the reality that every second molecule of oxygen we breathe is produced by phytoplankton (microscopic plants) in the ocean. The circle represents both myself and my origin as a creature in the sea.
2017 Crimson-banded-wrasse
Lino print. A4 approx.
Ex Eora Aboriginal Art show, Sydney
Casey Handmer collection, USA
2017 Phytoplankton, krill and Orca
Pyrography on wood boomerang
made by Paul Davis (Guindri)
Ex Eora Aboriginal Art show, Sydney
Portrait of Community 2025, Sawtooth ARI
Gifted to Antarctic krill biologist So Kawaguchi
2017 Seagrass Storypot
Terracotta
Artist's collection, Sydney
2017 Seafloor Krill
Mixed media
Ex Eora Aboriginal Art show, Sydney
Artist's collection, Sydney
2017 Seafloor Krill
Mixed media
Ex Eora Aboriginal Art show, Sydney
Artist's collection, Sydney
2017 Seagrass lens
Animated installation
Co-authored with William Gladstone
Photo: An Marosszeky
Artist's collection, Sydney
2017 Oceanic Bliss
Installation for Manly Art Gallery and Museum
Co-authored with William Gladstone
Artist's collection, Sydney
2017 Seagrass dreaming: pipefish, human
Installation for Manly Museum and Art Gallery
Co-authored with William Gladstone
Artist's collection, Sydney
2017 Transformations
Mixed media installation
Ex Eora Aboriginal Art Show,
Seed Centre, Carriageworks, Sydney
Artist's collection, Sydney
Data and Spirit Warning
Data and Spirit Warning was an installation developed for the Australian Society of Limnology conferenceat University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Co-created with William Gladstone, Claire Sives and other UTS scientists, with work by artists at Eora Aboriginal College, Sydney, and animators from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne.
Euphausia fluorescent
Installation detail
Recycled acrylic, hand-engraved
and heat-shaped. Sizes variable
Photo: Michael Lynch
EVENTS
Stephen Paddock shot and killed 60 and injured more than 400 attending a music festival from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, making it the deadliest mass shooting in American history;
Images of the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, dubbed the Great American Eclipse;
Two truck bombings kill at least 587 in Mogadishu, Somalia;
The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, including Harvey, Irma, and Maria, becomes the costliest recorded in history;
A military coup deposes Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, who had led the country for 37 years;
After 13 years of orbiting Saturn, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft ends its mission;
The Parliament of Catalonia declares the independence from Spain following Catalonia's referendum on independence, which was not recognized by any country and produced no legal effect;
The Iraqi armed forces recaptures Mosul during the war in the country against the Islamic State;
The Glade of Light memorial to the bombing following a Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England is conceived; the attack killed 23 and injured over a thousand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017
2004 Pteropod (winged foot)
Sea butterfly
Animation
Written by me, Lisa Roberts/Euphausia superba (Antarctic krill), on
10/10/2026
