Grasslands Repair Process seed pack photograph by artist Linda Tegg.
A living installation several months in the making has seen a collaboration between artist Linda Tegg and Melbourne’s Baracco+Wright Architects sow thousands of endangered grass seeds in the fields of Sanremo, Italy.
The grasses will feature in the exhibition Repair, consisting of three elements, Grasslands Repair, Skylight, and Ground, at the Australian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale this May.
The curators of this year’s Australian Pavilion, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, have called for stimulating discussions on the ‘relevance of architecture on this dynamic plane’.
An unprecedented collection of Indigenous Australian grassland species will be featured, provoking conversations on architecture and the land it occupies. Disconcertingly, just one per cent of the Western Plains Grassland plant community remain in their native ecosystem today.
Melbourne skyline from grasslands to the north. Photograph by artist Linda Tegg.
Inhabiting indoor and outdoor spaces, Grasslands Repair will feature over 60 species of a Victorian Western Plains Grassland plant community, totalling approximately 10,000 plants. Grasslands Repair will serve as a stark reminder of the enormous damage that has occurred to the Australian landscape since European colonisation.
Devised to be the size of a standard Australian family home, Grasslands Repair will transform the Pavilion into a thriving field of vegetation. Visitors are invited to enter into a dialogue between architecture and the endangered plant community.
‘We have often struggled with our relationship as architects when considering the use of land – it’s no small act. We believe there is a role for architecture to actively engage with the repair of the places it is part of, which our exhibition will communicate,’ said Creative Directors Mauro Baracco and Louise Wright.
Another component of this living installation will be Skylight – a life-support system of 100 LED lights suspended between the ceiling and the grassland, simulating the sun’s energy in an unlikely act of transference inside the Pavilion.
Accompanying the exhibition is an experimental video series: Ground, created by Linda Tegg, Baracco+Wright Architects and authored with David Fox. A final selection of clips from over 126 submissions, Ground will be showcased on five-metre-high screens inside the Pavilion.
(L-R) Artist Linda Tegg and Baracco+Wright Architects Mauro Baracco and Louise Wright. Image via The Australian Pavilion Biennale Architettura 2018.
Artist Linda Tegg said, ‘I work within a world of images that form our idea of what is natural, and our interactions with others. When I looked at Baracco+Wright’s notion of repair, it was clear that they were prompting a shift in how architecture understands its place.
‘Throughout our collaboration, it hasn’t been hard to find common ground. I often think it’s the prevalence of plants in our lives and thinking that enables the kind of generous collaboration that we’ve shared over the past year.’
The selected contributors for the 2018 Australian Pavilion are: Wave Hill Walk-Off Pavilions (Bower Studio, University of Melbourne) | Weave Youth and Community Services (Collins and Turner, Sydney) | Grassland Common: Linking Ecology and Architecture (d___Lab., RMIT University, Melbourne) | Triabunna Gatehouse (Gilby + Brewin Architecture, Melbourne) | Glebe4: The Foreshore Walk (James Mather Delaney Design, Sydney) | Garden House(Baracco+Wright Architects, Melbourne) | Ngarara Place, RMIT University (Greenaway Architects, Melbourne)|Shepparton Art Museum by Kerstin Thompson Architects, Melbourne) | Arden Macaulay Island City (Monash University Urban Laboratory, Melbourne) | The Globe (m3architecture with Brian Hooper Architect, Brisbane) |Prince Alfred Park and Pool Upgrade (Neeson Murcutt Architects with Sue Barnsley Design Landscape Architecture, Sydney) | Kullurk/Coolart: Somers Farm and Wetlands (NMBW Architecture Studio with William Goodsir and RMIT Architecture, Melbourne) | Featherston House (Robin Boyd, Melbourne) | Main Assembly Building, Tonsley Innovation District (Woods Bagot with Tridente Architects and Oxigen, Melbourne and Adelaide).
Repair will feature in the 16th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia.
