Florilegium #1, 2014, Joseph McGlennon
Pigment ink jet print, 127cm x 100cm
Provenance: Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne.
Exhibited: Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Mornington 2017.
Following a successful beginning in advertising, Joseph McGlennon’s award-winning photography career highlights reactions of animals in their natural habitats – the first kangaroos to be seen by European eyes, parrots perching on a branch surrounded by exotic blooms, the extinct Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) fresh from killing its prey. He takes hundreds of different photographs and spends weeks layering and arranging them to arrive at a final image. The landscape is as important as the animal itself – every single details, both of foreground and background is majestically hyper-real. (1)
Photographed in Madagascar, Tahiti and Singapore, in Florilegium Study #1, 2014 McGlennon has captured each bird, flower, vine and butterfly to create a Florilegium that is a landscape, straight from the Age of Enlightenment. Within the work there is an enchanting clash of empirical scientific observation, coupled with a romantically lush, compassionate and diffused spotlight on the plants and birds wild observed- at a brilliant moment before they vanish into the fog of time. This lush landscape dwells in a most complex, beautiful and sadly unreachable world. This work, inspired by the botanical drawings of Joseph Banks, was awarded the 2015 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize. (2)
Other works by this artist: