4 JUNE - 11 JULY 2026 THE MAIN GALLERY
THE MISTLETOE WALTZ ROSIE LLOYD GIBLETT
This exhibition explores how environmental art practices can unearth and archive positive symbiotic stories. The artist’s sister’s property has experienced increased birdlife since becoming regenerative. Habitat loss is the key threat to the painted honey eater, traditionally farmers have shunned mistletoe, considering it parasitic.
This multidisciplinary environmental art exhibition includes field work on Bigambul country near Goondiwindi, as well as. These creative experiments of drawing, painting and assemblage construction were completed in Lloyd-Giblett’s home studio on the Sunshine Coast. The collection of works was driven by the artist’s desire to investigate historical, ethical and affective relationships she has with the Western Queensland landscape. Through the making process Lloyd-Giblett embodied environmental art practices to create and imagine a speculative future for this site, grounded in notions of kinship, reciprocity and care.
Lloyd-Giblett explained that her explorations included traversing the landscape connecting from the earth upwards and transforming passive witnessing into an immersive wit(h)nessing*. She further noted that she walked, paused, listened and drew. The landscape was surveyed not with a view to understanding how it can support the artist but with a desire to unearth possibilities of mutual flourishing.
This project employs and draws attention to the symbiotic relationship between mistletoe plants and painted honeyeater (Grantiella picta) birds. Their mutualistic interdependence is a metaphor for stories of care and reparation at this location.
*Wit(h)nessing : a bodily encounter with shared earth others – kin, commensal, prey, predator.
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