Artistic Endeavour

Contemporary artists’ response to the legacy of Banks, Solander and Parkinson

Author: Kath Kerswell (Coordinator) and Dr Nita C Lester (President and Exhibition Co-Curator), Botanical Artists’ Society of Queensland

Published: Journal December 2020

Since 2003, the Botanical Artists’ Society of Queensland has presented a vibrant and varied exhibition program – including our popular displays featuring Australian native plants organised by Dorothy Muller, at Native Plants Queensland’s annual spring fair at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens Auditorium at Mt Coot-tha.

In development since 2017, the exhibition Artistic Endeavour commemorates the plants collected from the east coast of Australia in 1770 during the HMB Endeavour voyage to celebrate the wonder of our unique biodiversity and to reflect on the artistic, environmental and cultural significance of these botanical collections and the emergence of botanical art.

To help artists choose their plants, historical references were compiled, including the list of plants collected in 1770 (with current species names checked by botanists at the Queensland Herbarium), journals by Banks, Solander and Parkinson (available online and in library holdings), and the story of Banks’ Florilegium. A dedicated website was produced with project information for artists, including descriptions and locations of the plants from the list that were growing in National Parks, Herbaria, Botanic and private Gardens and supplemented by photographs, some of which were generously shared from Native Plants Queensland’s website.