Join us for the opening event at ANCA Gallery Wednesday 4 June from 5.30pm
Rich and Rare is a submersive exhibition, the outcome of several years of creative research into the (almost) lost world of ostrea angasi (native flat oyster) reefs.
Jacqui Malins, Collective forgetting, 2024, digital photograph, 42.0 x 59.4cm
Jacqui has materialised the angasi’s fragility, sensitivity, delicacy and now-skeletal distribution in a piece of hand-made cloth, assembled from machine-embroidered lace oysters. This ethereal artefact is used in performance photography, cyanotype, video and installation to create a watery world of light and shadow, accretion, growth, collapse and decay. Through performance, Jacqui explores colonial history and contemporary relationships to the reefs, calling back to traditions of lace use in dress, at the table and in ritual: decorating, dressing, veiling, revealing.
After encountering bleached ostrea angasi shells in a deposit near Eden, NSW in 2021, Jacqui began a personal investigation that has taken her from Yuin country on south coast of NSW to north-eastern Lutruwita/Tasmania and west to Oyster Harbour in Kinjarling/Albany, WA. Angasi once formed plentiful reefs around Australia’s southern shoreline, some of them hectares in size. Extraction, overconsumption and environmental change brought them close to extinction within a century of European arrival.
Jacqui Malins, Exoskeleton, 2024, digital photograph, 42.0 x 59.4cm
Jacqui has worked to understand what collective memory and forgetting, loss, grief and hope might mean for the fate of shellfish reefs and all the species that can depend on them. How do we treat our celebrated ‘beauties, rich and rare’? How do we become collaborators and allies with other species, to the benefit of us all?
Jacqui Malins is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer, whose practice incorporates sculpture, video, installation, performance, poetry and spoken word, drawing and photography. Jacqui is interested in the dynamics of environments and the relationships, patterns and forces shaping organisms—including the human one. Her base is Ngunawal/Ngambri country, Canberra.
FREE Artist Talk Saturday 14 June from 2 to 3pm. All welcome!
Join Jacqui Malins for a presentation and discussion about the research and processes behind Rich and Rare at the ANCA Gallery. Jacqui will talk about her pilgrimage to try and see the last remaining wild Ostrea angasi reef in north-western Lutruwita/Tasmania, her subsequent residency in Kinjarling/Albany and her how this body of work has evolved from works on paper to machine embroidered lace, video, performance and photography.
Closing reception Sunday 22 June from 3 to 4pm.
Join Jacqui to celebrate the close of Rich and Rare, her submersive exhibition about the (almost) lost world of Ostrea angasi (native flat oyster) reefs. It will also be an opportunity for informal discussion about the research and creative processes behind this body of work.