Seaweed Arboretum - Flora

Seaweed Arboretum – Flora is one of a suite of 3 installations, along with Forest and Float, exhibited at the Manly Art Gallery & Museum. The exhibition was held in conjunction with the Seaweed Forests Festival, and provided an evocative and immersive marine botanical environment for the month-long program of talks workshops and events.

Flora is a marine botanical collection of delicately ethereal seaweed pressings. Each specimen is suspended within a clear acrylic box frame, hung slightly out from the gallery wall. Their intricate forms are replicated in a precisely cast shadow on the wall behind. This shadow-life opens a dialogue with its own being - and invites us, on the other side, into the intimate reverie.

Included in this marine botanical arboretum of aqueous plant life are:

• Cystophora retorta
• Phyllospora comosa (Crayweed)
• Ecklonia radiata (Golden Kelp)
• Caulocystis cephalornithos
• Seirococcus axillaris
• Codium fragile
• Codium platyclados
• Hypnea sp
• Delisea pulchra
• Durvillea potatorum (Bull Kelp)