It's blooming big ... literally. QUT's Creative Industries Precinct has unveiled a new floral work of art on the giant 45 metre-long billboard that fronts the Kelvin Grove Road precinct in inner Brisbane.
Electronic media artist Jon McCormack was commissioned to create Bloom - a large-scale digital image that shows mutated and crossbred representations of native Australian flora.
The stark but ethereal flowers have been synthesised using software developed by the Melbourne-based artist and computer scientist.
Professor Peter Lavery, the director of QUT Precincts, said Bloom formed part of McCormack's continuing proposition that synthesised natures are becoming replacements for the real nature lost in urban environments through human development and progress.
He said McCormack's visually arresting and ambiguous work also had special ties to the local environment.
"Bloom takes native plant species local to the Kelvin Grove area - Melaleuca, Banksia, Hakea, Eucalyptus, Callistemon, Eremaa, Araucaria, and Dryandra - to create five images that draw upon one or more of these species," he said.
"Viewers may recognise elements of iconic Bunya Pine or Banksia forms, yet their appearance here is clearly strange.
"Each of the five new species is presented in isolation, starkly displayed on a black background, giving a clinical formalist feel.
"Each has a certain softness and synthetic beauty drawing on the dualist nature of synthetic biology's promise of immense new possibilities. Yet these possibilities may also have a cost to our existing nature and environment."
The public art billboard at QUT's Creative Industries Precinct in Kelvin Grove is the largest space of its type in Australia and is 45 metres long and nine metres high.
The Jon McCormack artwork will be on display for the next three months.
The Creative Industries Precinct at the Queensland University of Technology opened three years ago and is home to hundreds of students studying creative pursuits including visual arts, fashion, communication design and journalism.
McCormack was one of a dozen top artists approached in 2000 to participate in a focus group on the development of the Creative Industries Precinct as a new media art space.
Media contact: Mechelle Webb, QUT media officer, 07 3864 4494 or ml.webb@qut.edu.au
** A high-resolution image of the QUT billboard is available for media use.
