2021

Installation, mixed media on canvas paper.

In September 2019, my art students at Coast Art Centre and I began to discuss seaweed. Seaweed has vast potential to address environmental issues: it grows abundantly on nearby beaches and thrives on carbon dioxide. It also reduces methane emissions when added to cattle feed, and is a valued ingredient in aquaculture and healthcare products. My students responded with enthusiasm. They love the coastline, but are upset — even angry — about the state of the marine environment. Over the months following, our artistic explorations expanded to our oceans' broader health.

We shared reading material and video links in class. My students were most concerned with plastic over-use, general over-consumption, recycling, and chemical disposal. We settled upon a consistent format — a 20×20cm canvas — to facilitate a group installation, and the students expressed their concerns using watercolours, acrylic and textiles.

The Covid-19 lockdowns cut short our vibrant group meetings. We moved discussion online. Meanwhile, the environment improved from reduced human activity, and our subject matter became even more pertinent.

Students' daily exercise became opportunities to assist the environmental healing. The students collected rubbish from beaches and roadways, and while doing so, extended our group's conversations to their families and friends. Enthusiasm grew as awareness spread, and the students further deepened their knowledge and understanding with impressive independent research. We connected every 4-6 weeks, and officially reconvened in early 2021. The group had now grown to include members from Vashti Taverner’s art therapy class at Centennial Park.

My students continued working to discuss artistically the state of the ocean, keen to passionately express themselves. We included new materials in our work, most notably collected beach detritus. We agreed together that our art aims to increase awareness about our environmental concerns, and so to change behaviour. The 'Sea Worriers' exhibition is the result of our work.

Printed images made for the "Sea Worriers" exhibition (comprises 150 printed milk bottles), beach detritus.

© Mary van den Berk 2021

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2021

Several pieces each 20×20cm, mixed media on canvas.

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Paints include acrylic and watercolour, juxtaposed with materials from beach combing, recycling, repurposed council refuse pickups, old books, beach detritus, sea glass, shells, flotsam and jetsam.

© Mary van den Berk 2020

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2020

29.7×22cm, mixed media on canvas paper.

Centennial Park trees, Sydney, NSW.

Paint, and hessian cloth.

© Mary van den Berk 2020

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2020

1.7×1.3m, double-sided, up-cycled fabrics.

After encountering Bruce Pascoe’s “Dark Emu,” I was compelled to acknowledge that the official version of Australia's history is not the full truth.

Pascoe makes a compelling argument for a reconsideration of pre-colonial indigenous Australians' as 'hunter-gatherers.' He shows evidence that Aboriginal people were domesticating, sowing, harvesting and irrigating plants, and storing their produce.

Had I lived when our history was untruthfully recorded, I would have been making sampler quilts and needlework. My quilt here re-interprets history: centre pieces are hand-embroidered botanical drawings of Aboriginal plants.

© Mary van den Berk 2019/20

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2019

43×43 cm, mixed media on canvas.

Colin is my cheerful local postman in Sydney's 2011 propinquity. Colin was first drawn on canvas, then mono-print painted into with acrylic and oil. Lastly, embroidery is incorporated for added texture.

Drawing, acrylic, oil and embroidery on canvas.

© Mary van den Berk 2019

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2018

43×43cm, mixed media on canvas.

A 'MAD Monday' event on "Resilience" informed this subject matter: Meroogal Gardens.

Growing and raising our own food benefits individuals, communities, and our planet. One of the stories told at the event discussed a "war effort" of growing one's own vegetables and raising one's own chickens ('chooks'): creating a resilient food garden. Today’s popular "Edible Balconies" are in the same vein.

Inspired by the Belle Thorburn work 'Feeding The Chooks' (circa 1925), I incorporated drawn, painted and embroidered chooks, referenced from a photograph of Massaro Community Farm in the United States.

Pencil, acrylic paint and hand embroidery on canvas. A finalist in Meroogal Women’s Art prize 2018.

© Mary van den Berk 2018

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2014

Sculpture and imagery, mixed media.

This installation work explores how personal memories live on after death in familiar objects. It was created for the Hidden Sculpture Walk at Rookwood Cemetery, in 2014.

Mannequins wear clothing that previously belonged to someone who passed. Digital prints, including photographs, memorabilia and significant items, are sewn into the garment.

The jacketed mannequin represents my father, who passed months earlier. The 'high-viz' vest represents my brother Ged, who died six years earlier.

A memory box in the form of an old metal chest is also provided for visitors to add names and messages to someone they have loved and lost.

© Mary van den Berk 2013/14

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2011

76×101cm, oil on canvas.

Inspired by travel to India.

© Mary van den Berk 2011

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2012

43×43cm, mixed media on arts paper.

The Conversations exhibition is based on old family photographs: familiar, while hauntingly transient. I digitally created images, re-contextualising old photographs to create new meaning by incorporating new backgrounds, fabric and textural painting. A final layer is hand-drawn, framing the melding of the memories and re-interpretations together through one's individual experience.

This particular piece shows the van Sas family. The photographs were taken at Helmond Castle in the Netherland, in the early 1960s. They have been re-contextualised on railway tracks in Eskdale, New Zealand.

Digital prints, fabric and textured painting on arts paper.

© Mary van den Berk 2012

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