Soil Propositions. The EARTH Project. Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens.

materials: extracted soil aromas and glass flask ware, Themeda triandra plant, soil, digital print on rag paper, plywood constructions, single channel video animation, graphite drawing, rammed crushed rock, soil water, atomisers

Photo credits: Peter Mathew

Early in 2023, soil was sampled from the Queens Domain, across the road and up the hill from the Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens, which preserves critically endangered lowland Themeda triandra grasslands.

Following a logic of siphoning, where things are transferred from one place to another, or sometimes from one state of being to another, the elements of this artwork explore how our senses may be affected by the process of bringing a natural thing (the natural soil) into a cultivated space (the botanic gardens).

To this end, the natural soil was analysed to understand its molecular composition. From this information, a violinist was invited to sonically translate the molecular compounds, and chemists collaborated to conjure variations of soil scent.

Within Gatekeeper’s Cottage, furniture was created with a designer to house a Themeda triandra plant within a rhizobox, which enabled the plant’s developing root system to be viewed, and a bespoke sampling stand allowed the aroma of the soil the plant grows in to be smelt.

3D animations of the soil molecules were rendered with a videographer to visualise their invisible forms, accompanied by the violinist’s translation for each molecular compound.

In the Conservatory, crushed local rocks were rammed by hand into the shape of a slab-like obelisk, an architectural form constructed as a monument to mark places, people or events. Accompanying the earth form, ultrasonic mist diffusers released atomised soil water, extracted from natural soil sampled from the native grasslands of the Queen’s Domain and distilled into an essence.

During the exhibition, violinist Alethea Coombe performed sonic translations of the soil molecules sampled from the natural soil. The rammed form was un-stabilised and undertook a process of collapse. The soil smelling mist and soil molecule sounds drifted into the Conservatory, siphoning the Domain’s grasslands into this cultivated space.

On the Nature of Things was not exclusively seeking to engage with a notion of ‘nature’, rather present a proposition, through soil, to reflect on what drives an inherent nature within all things.

Acknowledgments: Stuart Houghton Design, violinist Alethea Coombe, Caz Whitehead and Tom Delfatti from Essential Oils Tasmania, Joseph Shrimpton/Flare Productions, Jason James, Unique Earth, Analytical Services Tasmania, Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens, Contemporary Art Tasmania and City of Hobart.

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