national gallery if Australia

Fiona HALL
born 1953 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
England, Europe 1976-78
United States 1979-82

Paradisus Terrestris 1989-90
twenty-three sculptures from the series

Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Sculpture, aluminium, tineach approx. 24.5 h x 11.0 w x 1.5 d cm

Purchased 1994

Accession No: NGA 94.244.A-W

The series is informed by the artist’s extensive research into botanical depictions. While the title is based on John Parkinson’s florilegium Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus Terrestris (1629), Hall was drawn to other examples, such as Robert John Thornton’s The temple of flora (1807). She was also fascinated by the history of ideas around plants, including systems of classification first devised by scholars such as Carolus Linnaeus in the eighteenth century that were based on looking at the male and female components of each plant. As Hall has explained: ‘At the time of his findings … people still believed that the Garden of Eden existed somewhere on earth. So they were shocked when he talked about plants in overtly sexual terms.’ Hall has also been interested in current findings that show there are more genetic similarities than differences between humans and the plant world.

This work caught by eye by shock and grabbed my attention once i had realise what was within the tins rather then the plants above them. The idea of linking human aspects to plants was very creative. This art work in fact was one of my favourites as it grabbed my attention and made me think about what this was all about and what the artist might have been thinking in the process of the creation.

Some people may think its crude and rude yet it is an aspect of life and as read above it is linked to the garden of Eden, just in a different aspect.

I enjoyed contemplating about this artwork.