Joseph Banks and the Flora of the Australian East Coast

  

 

Intending to produce a book, Banks employed a large team of artists and engravers to cut copper printing plates based on
these paintings and drawings, but the publication never eventuated and the plates laid in store for over 200 years.

 

In 1980, Alecto Historical Editions and the Natural History Museum, London, began a massive undertaking to publish the 743 botanical drawings in colour. This exhibition of a selection of these beautiful prints focuses on the specimens collected on the east coast of Australia. They reveal not only the incredible diversity of this native flora but also speak of the enthusiasm of early scientific enquiry into understanding and documenting these plants and the sheer beauty of the artists’ work in depicting them.

 

The exhibition will be accompanied by a small group of prints by another famed naturalist, John Gould, drawn from our own collection and an installation in the Darkroom space by local artist Linelle Stepto who has made a pointed contemporary response to the depiction of native flora.