About the artwork
Read artist Laura Woodward's statement about the artwork:
This artwork focuses upon the ways in which Castlemaine Art Museum came into being through a group of seven trailblazing women being present with each other – sharing their interests, their time and their knowledge – and how this communality resulted in them pushing boundaries, standing in solidarity for better representation of women in art, and building something of great significance to Castlemaine: the Castlemaine Art Museum and Gallery. The artwork commemorates the important legacy of these women and highlights their contribution to the cultural life and art of our town and region.
It also considers their strong connection with local flora and fauna and the Botanical Gardens, and the ways in which they appeared to find joy and solace in observing and collecting local specimens and building knowledge around native species.
Concept image by Laura Woodward. View from The Mill opposite the Botanical Gardens.
Approaching the Walker Street entrance of the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens, visitors encounter a series of seven timber sculptures on the grassy area - a direct reference to the seven women who founded the Castlemaine Art Museum. These abstracted, loosely human figures will appear to be engaging directly with the gardens. One is looking up into a tree, another crouching down to inspect a flower. A few are standing as if talking with each other or inspecting something on the ground together.
Materials
The use of timber as the primary material interlinks with the concept and site aesthetically and materially. The aesthetically “softer” material qualities of timber sit in contrast to many historical artworks which memorialise men and which are made from heavier, harder materials. Timber’s material warmth is appropriate for tactile engagement; with the figures at human-scale, many may wish to reach out and touch them, particularly children. The sculptures’ sympathetic materiality and positioning highlights the importance of the gardens as both a continuing, living botanical collection and a place of cultural and recreational importance to our local community. The lower section of each sculpture is cast in bronze to protect the timber from gardening equipment. In acknowledgement of Dja Dja Wurrung Country and People, there is textured subtle imagery of indigenous plants imprinted in the bronze which were selected with guidance from Aunty Kerri Douglas. Read more about how the sculpture was made.
Forms
Each of the seven figures is unique, with its own character and mannerisms. The final forms were informed by reference material gathered during the community engagement drawing excursions, where I took photos, drawings, or three-dimensional scans of participants as they drew and learnt about country – and as they literally embodied some of the ways in which the founding women spent much of their time.
Meaning
The abstract figures each have an individual character, yet they are also anonymous. From certain angles they may read as eroded river stones, time having worn away their details, their individuality. They are forgotten figures, speaking to the specific context of this artwork and the founding women’s stories, and also to the ways in which women’s stories and contributions have often been erased within art history. The anonymity of the figures also enables other potential readings of invisibility in relation to women, including the displacement of Djaara women from their traditional lands, which was occurring at the same time as the Castlemaine Art Museum was being founded.
Though inspired by the founding women’s story, these figures are not only those women – they could be any woman, every woman, any person, every person. Despite the abstraction – or perhaps because of it – our bodies will recognise these forms as human, and in doing so, empathise with them, see them, embody them.
Importantly, the work has a sense of lightness and play, embodying the feeling of the gardens, of lying on green grass, of enjoying the air when surrounded by abundant and healthy plants. Children will love them and want to play with and near them. The figures, in their quiet contemplation of the gardens, will contribute to that sense of slowing down, of breathing, that many experience when entering green spaces. In doing so, I hope that they offer a moment of calm and reflection for visitors, and they help to tell this important story for many years to come.