Weeds - Beautiful but Complicated

For about two years now, I have been making artworks that focus on the subject of "Beautiful Weeds". Taking those plants we know as roadside pests, garden over-growers or paddock infiltrators and making 'portraits' of them.

First "Beautiful Weeds" series, 2016. Blackberries and Sedges on silk. Shown at solo exhibition at the Japan Foundation Gallery, Sydney. Photo by Document Photography.

At first, this was a kind of straight-up visual fascination. Plants which I hadn't considered drawing before, let alone dyeing, were suddenly everywhere I looked. Actually, that was the clincher - realising that in trying to depict a realistic and natural Australian landscape, I was editing out many plants in order to represent just the natives - the Eucalypts and the Wattles. When I looked at the natural environment most familiar to me though, (the nature reserve at the back of our suburb), it was quickly evident that trying to depict the area without weeds would mean some serious editing. A vast majority of the intriguing plants up on that hill ARE weeds (according to lists and information compiled by our local government).

my 2017 edition of "The Beautiful Weeds of Canberra" shown in solo exhibitions in Canberra and Kyoto, October 2017. Series including Blackberry, Fennel, Yellow-Flag Iris, Salvation Jane....

Scarlet robins love sitting on these Greater Mullein stalks.
It's a Weed. Just saying.

Blackberries, sedges, "rosehips", cootamundra wattles, plantation pines, purple-top, mullein, salvation jane...all of these co-exist on the hill with Silver wattles, Eucalypts, Native Bluebells. Not to mention Crimson Rosellas, Black Cockatoos, Scarlet Robins, Superb Fairy Wrens, Golden Whistlers...(some of which, by the way, FAVOUR perching and feeding on the plantation pine trees, cootamundra wattles and greater Mulleins...but anyway, I digress)

So this whole "Beautiful Weeds" obsession that I've had going for 2 years or more began as an attempt to render a realistic depiction of the landscape before me; a more faithful conglomerate of present species than if I were to edit the 'weeds' out and leave only the 'natives'.




Since diving into this topic, it turns out - as it always does when you dig a little deeper into anything - that I'm not the first to think weeds could actually be beautiful.
Like, I'm about 500 years late to the party.

'Large Piece of Turf' 1503 by Albrecht Dürer

Here's a beautiful close up of some ordinary grasses by Albrecht Dürer from 1503. Even in 1503, artists were recognizing the beauty of the ordinary plants at our feet.

Albrecht Dürer, 'Large Piece of Turf' 1503 (detail)

It's also been interesting to find other people out there doing cool things to do with weeds. Here's just a couple.

• Spontaneous Urban Plants, is a research project based in New York with a website and instagram account that aims to spur discussions about the place of weeds in an urban environment and the cultural perceptions we attach to them.  
• Diego Bonetto based in Sydney calls himself "The Weedy One" and is leading a revival of foraging and edible weeds education. His website includes a link to this great "Wild food Map" sharing information about locations of different edible species. He is also an artist and has some wonderful prints of common weed species here.

Now don't get me wrong.
This isn't to say that weeds are all great and that they don't come with a whole load of emotional and political baggage. Because they do. I acknowledge that but I am merely acting as observer, depicting the environment as I see it.

"Narrabundah Hill", katazome and yuzen on silk, 2017. On show at Solo Exhibition at Galerie h2o, Kyoto October 2017. This piece was an ode to my "local hill" with it's co-existing Cootamundra wattles, Mulleins, Blackberries, Scarlet Robins and native grasses.

Slowly, I am reading opinions of scientists and researchers who know far more than I do and learning from them.

One book I eventually made it through was "Beyond the War On Invasive Species", by Tao Orion. Whilst her book was written more for those working in environmental restoration, she had some really poignant things to say about the role of weeds and our interactions with them.

"Invasions are happening faster now than at any point in recent history, a fact that leads to a great deal of concern since invasive species appear to disrupt the "fragile balance" of nature...however, evolution is at work even in these scenarios...." pg 91

Tao notes that even though weeds can be unpredictable in a new environment, they are often favoured by local birds and insects for food or nesting habitat.

"..All organisms, including invasive species, require the participation of other organisms to ensure their survival - plants depend on pollination and seed dispersal to survive and spread, and animals need adequate food and habitat. If invasive species are spreading and thriving, then they benefit from, and are benefiting, such ecological assiciations...even the world's "worst" invasive species are being used by other organisms in their new habitats." pg 94.

This observation is seconded by Australian biologist and author Tim Low in "New Nature". Low lists different relationships between Australian native animals and foreign weeds: Lantana provides protection for fairy-wrens, bandicoots and reptiles. Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos feed on the seeds of weed 'Spiny Emex'. Muir's Corellas, a rare member of the Cockatoo family, eat another weed, Guildford grass. Low goes as far as to say "Many species now rely largely on alien tucker. If Australia's foreign contingent vanished overnight, many eco-systems would be kicked into chaos." pg 93

Low also points out that the birds or animals themselves are simply being opportunistic in their use of foreign weeds as food or habitat. "...no law of nature forces native animals to prefer their natural foods, or even to recognise them." pg 104.

I call these next images "Native Birds happily tucking into Alien Tucker"

Satin Bowerbird raiding berries off next door's ivy vine. They don't see a foreign plant, they see food! 

Crimson Rosella eating pansies outside the Legislative Assembly (silly parrot)

Sulphur Crested Cockatoos destroying, I mean eating, Cherry Blossoms in the Canberra-Nara Peace Park. 

Admittedly, the birds above aren't eating weeds exactly, they're eating non-native plants. Still, the sentiment is the same: non-native plants can serve a purpose in an eco-system too.

Back to Tao Orion, she brings the subject of weeds back to the bigger picture of how the environment is shifting, and will continue to change.

"we will not achieve anything...by continuing to eradicate these novel organisms in the vain hope that the ecosystems where they live will be the same as they were at some idealized time in the past. We are here now, on the cusp of the sixth great planetary extinction, with climate change intensifying, and the ways that we relate to the land that sustains us will become ever more central to designing our way through the challenges to come."

It reminds me of the problems faced by traditional crafts and this attempt to stem alterations to the long-held traditions when change is the only certainty. When we can step back from our own points of view and ego for a moment, we see that our worldviews are based on our human expectations of how something should be in order to benefit us. Not everything exists in the way that humans would like. Nature is a far more complicated and interconnected system than we can hope to exert control over.

ANYWAY!
This has become a long and winding, probably flawed, musing on weeds. I am still focusing on them in my work. I plan to expand my "Beautiful Weeds of Canberra" series into next year. You can see more on my homepage here, too.

Beautiful Weeds works on my website

I want to finish with a snatch from "The Book of Thistles" by Noelle Janaczewska. I loved this book, it's part poetry, part musings on the nature of the weed and the thistle in social history.

 "Australia's relationship with hardhead thistles digs into a series of deeper, thornier questions. About what we believe counts as responsible citizenship. About evolving notions of national identity, the siting of frontiers, and how we relate to each other across our differences. About deserving and undeserving nature. All those shades of green - Legal. Scientific. Romantic. Tragic."

Beautiful Weeds and the Sixth Extinction

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've muttered a bit before about weeds and how they might not be the baddies we've condemned them to be - and can also be quite beautiful.

Since then, I've started doing some reading about said weeds - mostly to see whether I was being naive to suggest that "weeds" and "exotic pests" will probably just take over the landscape as part of the natural cycle of things. So far I'm still straggling through the thick scientific-ness of the books but I've found some interesting insights.

For one, I'm certainly not the first one to show a little sympathy to the poor weed. Really, it's a matter of nomenclature.

Beautiful invasive "weed" - Lantana Camara, spotted in Wakayama prefecture, Japan

Because really, there's no difference between a so called "plant" and a "weed". Weeds are just something we humans have decided are plants in the wrong place and are not advantageous for our purposes - eg invading an otherwise productive crop area, messing up a paddock we decided to graze sheep or cows in graze (also exotic, by the way), etc etc.

Some weeds can also be classified "invasive species", which, if you want to get finicky and historical, is mildly unfair, given we Australians got off boats from overseas and spread all over this place. (ha!) As a side note, see this interesting explanation of why some call Australia Day, which falls on January 26th "Invasion Day.

One book I've started reading is "Beyond the War on Invasive Species" by Tao Orion. She's all for taking a natural approach to controlling weeds and restoring habitats and one thing she says stands in the way of that is the way we talk about weeds using unscientific and emotional words like "invasive" and "noxious".

http://www.chelseagreen.com/beyond-the-war-on-invasive-species

Tao explains how some ecologists will make the case that introduced species are a threat because it can't be predicted exactly what long term effects they might have on their adopted habitat or neighbouring species. And yet, there are actions taken to eradicate certain invasive species using herbicides that have, when you look into it, highly questionable ingredients and effects which no doubt pose risks in the future that cannot be fully predicted.

Wouldn't it be easier to just let the "weeds" be? Probably that is too naive of me. I haven't read far enough into the book yet to see what Tao suggests instead of severe chemical eradication.

It's interesting how things have come to this point of demonising some plants over others. I guess it's a side effect of agricultural society. When really, 

the idea of "invasive species" is peculiar since all plants and animals are native to our singular and unique planet. 

Tao Orion, "Beyond the War on Invasive Species"pg 10

Blackberry - Invasive (and delicious...) image from Eurobodalla Shire Council

On a different note, did you know there is an official list called "Weeds of National Significance" in Australia? Sounds quite noble, doesn't it? (Not as much when you use their abbreviation of WoNS...) It's a list of 32 weeds that is: 

"a proactive attempt to strategically manage priority weeds that pose future threats to primary industries, land management, human or animal welfare, biodiversity and conservation values. It is an effective tool that...assists States/Territories to prioritise their weed management strategies for the benefit of Australians"

On the list of 32 WoNS, only some are found in the ACT. You can find more info here, if you're into that kinda thing. http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive/weeds/weeds/lists/wons.html

More info HERE

One more book I found, which is not as relevant for the humble weeds issue but interesting in general is "The Sixth Extinction" by Elizabeth Kolbert. Her book title refers to the wave of extinctions that have occurred in the last 500 million years or so; "The Big Five" Extinction events which have been altering the species on the planet and suggests that we are now in the Sixth wave. In other extinction events, climate and sea level changes could have been the triggers but this "Sixth Extinction" is said to have been caused by Humans. There's also suggestions we may be in a new epoch, the Anthropocene, marking the overwhelming human impact on recent modern history.

Kolbert's book documents, amongst other things, some of the species that are becoming extinct around the world, at remarkable rates and the efforts by scientists to study them. She makes an interesting point about the mixing of species across continents in the modern era. To me it seems unavoidable that plants will mix and collide and naturalise.

"From the standpoint of the world's biota, global travel represents a radically new phenomenon and, at the same time, a replay of the very old. The drifting apart of the continents that Wegener deduced from the fossil record is now being reversed - another way in which humans are running geologic history backwards and at high speed. Think of it as a souped-up version of plate tectonics minus the plates. By transporting Asian species to North America, and North American species to Australia, and Australian species to Africa, and European species to Antarctica, we are, in effect, reassembling the world into one enormous superccontinent - what biologists sometimes refer to as the New Pangaea."

(pg 208 The Sixth Extinction, An Unnatural History)

Some examples of plants "jumping continents". It's all give and take though...

Prickly Pears - weed gift from the Americas to Australia

Sweet Hakea a weed gifted from Western Australia to South Africa

Tasmanian Blue Gum - hey California, you're welcome!

Camphor Laurel - Thanks for that China & Japan! now a weed in NSW and QLD

ANYway. I'm still reading these books (well, let's be honest, there's not a whole lot of reading happening at the moment) and these are just tid-bits that have tickled my interest.

It's all been part of thinking about a new series of work I'm making, "The Beautiful Weeds of Canberra"

For this series, I've been sketching and dyeing some of the weeds found aoround nature reserves and suburbia in Canberra, kind of elevating them from ordinary stragglers to elegant, proud plants. As I've been sketching them, which takes a lot of concentrated observation, I've noticed how many are really quite beautiful. Well, re-noticed. I already had an inkling this was the case and it's proven true. I hope the weeds will come across as I intended when the works are complete. 

Here are a few progress shots. The finished works will be in show in Sydney next month. More to come on that next time!