This is a short film by Joe Shemesh from my Arts Residency on the North East Peninsula of Recherche Bay, far south Tasmania, 2018.

It was filmed just before I travelled to Europe to view the Type Specimen record collections in Florence, Paris and London Herbariums; as part of my Churchill Fellowship.

This is the very landscape from which the French d’Entrecasteaux expedition made important first scientific collections and documentation in 1792-3.

Here I am adding to my herbarium collections, pressing plants, creating mono-prints and immersing in this wild and stunningly beautiful cultural landscape which is a touchstone to the early first contact and historical record of Australia.

Enjoy!

At the time of filming, I wrote that this was, ‘A week in the wild, immersed in the landscape so relevant to my artwork, with layers of history revealed. The d’Entrecasteaux scientific expedition visited Recherche Bay twice, in 1792 and 1793, making what is now an important collection of botanical and ethnographic material; geo-magnetism; map-making and knowledge.

‘We were there 225 years to the very day in which French naturalist JJH Labillardiere and crew were making their historically significant collections. I visited the site of the French Garden, walked the land now managed for conservation values so well by the Tasmanian Land Conservancy, kayaked on the Black Swan Lagoon and worked on mono prints. With gratitude to the Leprena Trust for providing such a fabulous and ethical, low footprint on this land.’