Gardening news...

The Ashfield Community Gardeners are proud to announce the launch of our brand 
new website at www.ashfieldcommunitygardeners.org 

If you would like to try community gardening in Ashfield Council locale, please come along to one of our working bees at the times listed below.

• Summer Hill Eora Garden: 9:30am on the second Saturday and fourth Sunday of the month
• Haberfield Community Garden: 9:30am on the fourth Saturday of the month
• Ashfield Park Community Garden: 9:00am on the first and third Saturday of the month

Castor Oil Plant

Ricinus communis

image from Wikipedia

Tall shrub to 3m high common in waste areas. The stems

are red tinged and the leaves are large and lobed, with

suppressed veins. The sap is white. Native to Africa. Often found along railway lines.

Flowers: Reddish green, flowers in summer.

Fruit/Seed: Green to black spiny fruit capsule occuring

in autumn. Seeds are speckled and bean-like.

Dispersal: Seed explosion from capsule, water.

Special Note: Seeds are highly toxic to humans and animals.

words and above image are from IWEG's bandicoot bush care newsletter

Bird Week 20 - 26 Oct

a White faced heron  visted my backyard this morning.. first time I have seen one at home! I am a little excited and it happens to be bird week where Bird Australia wants You to get involve in bird conservation.  "this year we invite you to take part in our new Aussie Backyard Bird Count. It’s easy and it’s fun, so hit the website to get a free app with a built-in field guide so you can get started."   I just did my count!

Gunyah AIR

At Gunyah artist-in-residence in North Cove Arms, near Port Stephens, there is plenty of space for quiet reflection and wildlife inspiration. I have recently returned, and wanted to share this link and great picture looking out from the studio. Hello

IWEG via weebly

The new website  for IWEG looks good and where I found this fab picture of some cuties - baby bandicoots 

next working bee will be 
September 21 – Waratah Mills 
(enter via the Davis St Car Park of Waratah Mills)

tomorrow's IWEG working bee cancelled

Anredera cordifolia pic from news.redland.qld.gov.au

Next planting day: September 21 – Waratah Mills (enter via the Davis St Car Park)

Another weed often found in inner west gardens and bush care sites

Anredera cordifolia commonly known as the Madeira vine or mignonette vine, is a South American species of ornamental succulent vine of the family Basellaceae. The combination of fleshy leaves and thick aerial tubers makes this a very heavy vine. It smothers trees and other vegetation it grows on and can easily break branches and bring down entire trees on its own.

A. cordifolia is an evergreen climber that grow from fleshy rhizomes. It has bright green, heart-shaped, fleshy shiny leaves 4–13 cm long. Wart-like tubers are produced on aerial stems and are a key to identifying the plant. It produces masses of small fragrant, cream flowers on dependent racemes, which may be up to 30 cm (12 in) in length. The plant spreads via the tubers, which detach very easily

A. cordifolia can reproduce through the proliferation of tubers and also from rhizome fragments that may be broken off. Although this species has both male and female flowers they rarely reproduce sexually and produce seed. This species often spreads through its own vegetative growth, but can easily be transported by human activities. If fragments end up in waterways, they are easily transported to new locations in this manner.

sourced from IWEG Jo Blackman and wikipedia

Today is Good News for Whales

Above are details from Cat Bailey's hanging nylon bag installation please see and read more here 

Lets hope today's historic ruling by the International Court of Justice ends Japan's murdering of whales (and thanks to the 2010 Rudd government for this campaign).

"Japan had justified the slaughter of more than 10,000 whales in the Southern Ocean in the past 25 years on the grounds that it was done for scientific purposes, even though it sold them on commercially."  

The Independent TUESDAY 01 APRIL 2014

MINING: gouging the country

Articulate project space  December 1  at   2 - 4 pm

for the launch of the latest Artlink issue 

and the last day of LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND

The world is hungry for minerals and fuel. Is Australia's preparedness to gouge its (sacred) earth any different to that of any other country? The land's value in spiritual as well as economic terms has led to some of the most debated legislation of contemporary times – from Australian Aboriginal ownership and land rights to mining, coal seam gas extraction, the value of the land; who owns it; who has the rights to use it; to sell it; to exploit it; to act as custodian of it. Initially defined as "Terra Nullius" this country is now recognised as an ancient, mineral-rich continent of hotly contested territories.

This issue digs deep into the seen and unseen impact of big mining and its greed for the rapid and ruthless exploitation of fossil fuels. It comes at a turning point for the community in relation to climate change. With the carbon level in the air now reaching 400 ppm, coal mining can never be ‘clean’ or sustainable; 350.org, an urgent global public campaign to keep coal in the ground is growing.

Artists, artists' alliances and arts writers join with environmentalists to raise consciousness about the dangers of mining operations on farmlands, rivers, in remote areas, deserts, and coastal areas, as well as in the depth of the oceans.

• Ken Mulvaney writes on the ancient rock art being damaged by proximity to mining operations on the Burrup Peninsula.

• The tension around funding for arts, science and community enterprise from mining companies which commonly exploit the prestige of arts projects to varnish their image. Arts patronage is used as a wedge to buy off the potential community opposition and the custodial burden is getting heavier for Indigenous land holders in many regions.

• During the mining boom has support to the arts from mining companies been minimal relative to their profits?

Artists include Fiona Hall, Cai Quo-Qiang, Craig Walsh, Jan Senbergs, John Gollings, Ah Xian, and Raymond Arnold. 

Writers include Daniel Thomas, Sam Cook, David Hansen, Michael Taussig, Judith Blackall, and Jane Deeth.

PRESS RELEASE

Williams River Valley Artists' Project presents

LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND will show the work of artists Neil Berecry Brown, Sue Callanan, Juliet Fowler Smith, Noelene Lucas, Christine McMillan, Ian Milliss, Margaret Roberts, Toni Warburton and David Watson, made in protest against the fossil-fuel industries and their role in the growing crisis of global warming.

at Articulate project space
16 Nov to 1 Dec

 Williams River Valley Artists' Project 's newspaper The Stuttering Frog #2 will be launched at the opening. 

Bird Week

image from BirdLife Australia's newsletter

Celebrate Bird Week 19 - 25 October, see more at Birdlife

and Ornitho-logical exhibition and residency runs until 26th

Ornitho-logical

as invited artist-in-residence this month for the temporal Pop In Space at 124 Marion St Leichhardt, artworks are up and installations are made including a great interactive No Honeyeaters by Kirsty Collins (detail pictured). 

The all bird exhibition runs until the 26th Oct and is open on Weds - Sat 11am - 4 pm  

is now in its second month and has plenty of great workshops/events, please check out the program here.

Animal Welfare League fundraiser

at Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay

2013 Sydney Writers Festival    20-26 May

The Sydney BAG (Book Art Group) makes art from discarded books and non-traditional materials. 

'Lifecycle' is an installation of reborn text and Australian domestic imagery. With great images seen here

This free exhibition will be featured in the Foyer of Pier 2/3 for the duration of the Festival.

park art

The Blue Trees in Texas "takes an urban landscape with which you are familiar and changes it for a brief period of time so that it becomes something unfamiliar. We are creatures who like certainty, and we become disconcerted when our environment changes. Yet, we have altered and destroyed much of the global environment. With this destruction, we have caused the extinction of countless species.

The primordial forests of the world are disappearing at an alarming rate. It is easy to restore the trees we have coloured blue back to their natural state. However, without some serious efforts, the old species will disappear. They do not have the option of restoration."

- Konstantin Dimopoulos

Song Dong

Now on at Carriageworks - Chinese artist - Song Dong's Waste Not is a dedication to his late father through family objects kept, stored by his mother. After showing in the World's major art institutes, it arrives via 40lt shipping containers holding 10,000 items and a section of Dong's family home. An amazing work in dealing with grief, remembrance, hoarding, for me - consumerism...and a celebration of life.  A family project, the work is always installed by the artist and his mother and sister. more great images here

A must see -  on until March 17

Happy 2013. Environmental Change...

in the foreground, detail of two sculptures by Gordon Stokes

During December as artist-in-residence in Portland, south-west Victoria, I had the privilege to be involved with curator and artist, Catherine Bailey, in a wonderful group exhibition, Environmental Change - a visual response, at the Portland Art Centre.  The show continues until the end of this month and some of the work can be seen via the fb page here. Most of the works in the show reuse found materials which I find to be a truely inspirational way to make art.... it's economical, environmental and ethical!

Snacks, a few pieces here, depicts remembered threatened animals belonging to the Portland area 

painted on found throw-out food packaging

Planting Cheer with IWEG

Sydney Biennale finishes today

detail of Hassan Sharif's Objects  materials include everyday rope, bags, plastic, wire and string

ARTcycle residency at INDEX project space

lots on during ARTcycle's residency 

on until the 11th August 

and for all the details please look here

water debris

© PAOLA TALBERT   Gyre 8   2012  60 x 60cm   awarded Highly Commended at the 2012 GreenWay Art Prize

Above photograph shows a fragment of an everyday urban detritus so beautifully enticing but revealing a part of our human disconnect. This work is from Paola Talbert's newest series Gyre, an ocean vortex, where originally full of plankton now collects millions of kilos of rubbish... our rubbish! Here is a good link with more information on what they call the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a landfill in the ocean.

Your piece Paola is an exquisite example of the beauty and the foul aspects of this wonderful and absurd world we live in! Thank you