In every corner of the landscape, countless narratives of resilience and drama, beauty and fecundity, unfold. Yet these are sometimes unseen and often untold. Walking on Jinibara Country, in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast, Sarah Rayner attunes her senses—and ours—to the lesser-known stories of undergrowth. Her new body of work, Understories, documents observations of native plants from the lower layers of the forest stratum. Here, she finds seductive and sculptural shapes. Some specimens reveal ancient symmetries and strikingly robust material forms. Others evidence delicate textures and record breakages, splinters and loss. Among them all, Rayner attends to the exceptional metamorphosis of plants’ reproductive organs. In Forthcoming Flowers and Fruits, she reads about the seasonal and climatic conditions of a specific time and place. To highlight the significance of her work’s focus, Rayner renders the minuscule gynoecium of native flora larger-than-life-size, expanded and enhanced. Her characteristic use of monochromatic porcelain further trains our gaze on the extraordinary tension, seductive functionality and determination of plant reproduction. Stepping back, we might read each artwork as a hieroglyph, their horizontal groupings as texts that run along the gallery wall. By attending to nature’s peripheries, plants underfoot and overlooked, Rayner creates a new language of environmental poetry and asks us to listen—with wonder and curiosity–to its words.

Words by Dr Louise R Mayhew

Plant names: Common and botanical
1A Red Cedar: Toona ciliata
1B Sandpaper fig: Ficus coronata
1C Melaleuca nodosa: Prickly-leaved paperbark
1D Firewheel tree: Stenocarpus sinuatus
1E Richmonds birdwing vine: Aristolochia praevenosa
1F Blooming Hakea: Hakea  florulenta
1G Mountain Devil: Lambertia formosa
1H Mountain Devil: Lambertia formosa
1I Wombat berry: Eustrephus latifolius