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linda tegg

in collaboration with horticulturist john delpratt and landscape architect anthony magen

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Grasslands is a living installation that gathers over 10,000 indigenous plants. This organic composition aims to recreate the vast grass plains that stretched over this site before the State Library of Victoria was established in the mid-nineteenth century.

Linda Tegg conceived of this site-specific project during her 2012 Georges Mora Foundation Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria. Researching the original flora of this site, the artist found that most available data was interpretative, from Victorian landscape paintings to illustrated maps.

Looking to expand her sources of knowledge, Tegg collaborated with horticulturist John Delpratt and the University of Melbourne to source, grow and nurture the 10,000 indigenous plants and grasses that make up Grasslands.

The result is a transformation of history and nature by artistic imagination, inviting us to visualise the layers of memory and place.

‘wading through grass as green as leek and nearly breast high’

Garyowen’s Melbourne 1835–1852

“An exercise in vision and detail, the more time spent contemplating the Grasslands, the more our eye sees blossoming the bushy Kangaroo and Wallaby grasses.”

Linda Tegg’s ‘Grasslands’ – The Beauty of Ideas

Linda Tegg’s thought-provoking practice is aligned in the legacy of the 1960s conceptual art movement whereby an idea forms the catalyst and core of a work of art. As such, the artist first approached Grasslands as an idea, which proved to be a good one [1]. As the American artist Sol LeWitt (1927-2008) commented in his iconic “Sentences on Conceptual Art” in 1969: It is difficult to bungle a good idea. Tegg’s poetic and wild idea was to reconstruct the flora that thrived on the land where the State Library of Victoria’s iconic edifice now stands. The aim was to create a temporal layering where memory and the present coexist and where indigenous flora and Victorian architecture meet.

In her previous works, Tegg had already explored the ascendency of man over nature. She used highly trained animals, such as sheep and horses, placing them in a gallery context where they performed highly estheticized and choreographed poses. These uncanny moments were immortalised in photographs or videos, creating a fantasized portrait of nature, much like in a dream or in a David Lynch movie.

For Grasslands however, Tegg’s conceptual idea of bringing back to life the natural history of the site grew into a labour of love. She researched the State Library of Victoria’s collection to find illustrated maps of early Melbourne, Victorian paintings of the Australian landscape and rare books on indigenous plants. In the plethora of 19th century paintings gathered in the Library’s gallery, such as Frederik McCubbin’s Melbourne gaol in sunlight from the Public Library Grounds (1884), the nascent city is depicted as having replaced the natural site.

Tegg was also drawn to was the records of European explorers and settlers who noted with astonishment the beauty they found in the Australian grasslands and how closely these resembled the parks of England. At that time, cultivating flora was synonymous with culture and the leisure classes. They recorded their findings of the rich Australian grasslands as an inexplicable phenomenon rather than looking at the Aboriginal techniques of cultivating the land, such as fire stick farming.

These historical documents combined offered representational, interpretative clues but no reliable sources, such as listings of species for example. Wanting to expand her sources of knowledge, Tegg collaborated with The University of Melbourne, and horticulturist John Delpratt to research the biodiversity of the site. Over 15 months, they cultivated 15,000 plants of 60 indigenous species that comprise a rich fragment of this historical landscape.

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Grasslands was thus composed as a site-specific work and designed to create a natural overlay on the Library steps. The public art installation came in direct contact with Melbournians as a form of public remembrance and celebration of the cultural natural roots of the site.

However, like all great artworks, Grasslands offers viewers multiple layers of entry. On an immediate level, the work transforms the steps of the State Library of Victoria, a historical place for social and political gathering, into a sphere of pleasure and delight. An exercise in vision and detail, the more time spent contemplating the Grasslands, the more our eye sees blossoming the bushy Kangaroo and Wallaby grasses. The rich palette of flowers, such as Chocolate Lilies, Lemon Beauty-heads and Billy Buttons draw butterflies and insects that have not been seen on the site for many years.

But Grasslands also functions as green urban retreat for people to enjoy and gather in the summer months. As a work of immense artistic imagination created in a public space, it offers a utopian microcosm that directly engages even the most casual of passer-by’s. More politically engaged Melbournians might perceive this work as a political gesture breathing life back into long-lost Australian indigenous species. Grasslands offers Melbournians the rare chance to experience their city transformed by this artistic imagination. Ultimately, Tegg’s Grasslands is an open-ended work, for viewers to interpret and connect to their own experiences of Australian nature or their idea of it.

After almost two years of development, when Grasslands was planted on the forecourt of the State Library of Victoria, the recurrent feedback from the public has been to call for this work to be permanent. Grasslands will be gifted to the City of Melbourne’s Royal Park and a number of plants will be given away to Melbournians who will be able to enrich their gardens with indigenous species.

Because Grasslands oscillates from poetry to politics, from past to present, from function to art, it instantly became a treasured experience for Melbournians. While ephemeral, the beauty and ideas represented by Tegg’s work will linger in Melbournian’s collective memory for years to come.

Anais Lellouche

Curator, Special Projects
State Library of Victoria

1. The prophetic definitions of conceptual ‘Art as Idea’ was written by the great American artist Sol LeWitt in his 'Sentences on conceptual art’. First published in 0-9 (New York), 1969, and Art-Language (England), May 1969.

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eucalyptus camaldulensis – river red gum
eucalyptus melliodora – yellow box
acacia mearnsii – black wattle
acacia melanoxylon – blackwood
allocasuarina verticillata – drooping she oak
banksia integrifolia – silver banksia
bursaria spinosa – sweet bursaria
austrostipa bigeniculata – kneed spear-grass
dichelachne crinita – plume grass
elymus scaber australian – wheatgrass
microlaena stipoides – weeping grass
poa morrisii velvet – tussock-grass
rytidosperma caespitosum – common wallaby grass
rytidiosperma racemosum – striped wallaby grass
rytidiosperma setaceum – bristly wallaby grass
themeda triandra – kangaroo grass
dianella admixta – black anther flax-lily
dianella amoena – matted flax-lily

lomandra filiformis – wattle mat-rush
acaena echinata – sheep’s burr
arthropodium strictum – chocolate lily
asperula conferta – common woodruff
brachyscome dentata – lobe-seed daisy
bossiaea prostrata – creeping bossiaea
brunonia australis – blue pincushion
bulbine bulbosa – bulbine lily
caesia calliantha – blue grass-lily
calocephalus citreus – lemon beauty-heads
chrysocephalum apiculatum – common everlasting
chrysocephalum semipapposum – clustered everlasting
convolvulus angustissimus – pink bind-weed
cynoglossum suaveolens – sweet hound’s-tongue
craspedia variabilis – billy buttons
dichondra repens – kidney weed
drosera peltata – pale sundew
einardia nutans – nodding saltbush
hypericum gramineum – small st john’s wort

kennedia prostrata – running postman
linum marginale – native flax
microseris sp. – murnong/yam daisy
leptorhynchos squamatus – scaly buttons
leptorhynchos tenuifolius – wiry buttons
pelargonium rodneyanum – magenta stork’s-bill
podolepis jaceoides – showy podolepis
ptilotus macrocephalus – feather-heads
ptilotus spathulatus – pussy tails
senecio sp. – fireweed
stackhousia sp. – creamy candles
veronica gracilis – slender speedwell
velleia paradoxa – spur velleia
wahlenbergia communis – tufted bluebell
wahlenbergia gracilis – sprawling bluebell
wahlenbergia luteola – bronze bluebell
wahlenbergia stricta – tall bluebell
xerochrysum viscosum – sticky everlasting

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Grasslands would not have been possible without the enourmous efforts of many people. Thank you to all of them.

Anais Lellouche
Sascha Andrusiak
Anthony Magen
Brian Bainbridge
David Callow
Catherine Duggan
Edwina Bartlem
Caronline Williams
Suzie Gasper
Robert Heather
Indra Kurzeme
Robyn Walton
Susan Long
Caroline Robinson

Georgina Criddle
David Fox
Lauren Dunn
Tim Edser
David Franklin
Ian Taylor
Ian Shears
Monika Janiak
Jen Pearce
John Rayner
Joe Robinson
Ken Hitchcock
Andrea Kodym
Laura Manariti

Meg Simondson
Mike Tegg
Ros Tegg
Nick Osborne
Natalie Trefz
Nick Williams
Oran Jacob
Sam Russell
Adrian Marshall
Sue Murphey
Jade Fallon
Nic Tammens
Francesca Siska
Kim Loidl

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CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS

Artist Tour

Monday 13 October at 5pm

Go behind the scenes on an artist tour with Linda Tegg.
Bookings required

CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS

Panel Discussion

Wednesday 15 October at 6pm

Join Grasslands artist Linda Tegg and a panel including horticulturalists and historians as they explore the history and ecology of native grasslands.
Bookings required

CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS

Grasslands Tour

Saturday 25 October at 8:30am

Join horticulturalist John Delpratt on a tour of precious remnant native wildflower grasslands including a visit to the Grasslands installation.
Bookings required

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Grasslands will be located on the forecourt of the State Library of Victoria from Saturday 11 October untill Sunday 23 November 2014.
It is free and open to the public 24 hours a day.