Zena Cumpston
Zena Cumpston a Barkandji artist, writer, researcher and curator. For many years her work has focussed on the plant knowledge and foodways of south-eastern Aboriginal people.
These linocut collages were commissioned by TarraWarra Museum of Art to illustrate Cumpston's limited edition publication ‘Plant kin’, her creative contribution to The Soils Project exhibition (5 August – 12 November 2023).
Each of the plants featured are and have been culturally important to Wurundjeri people over time, keeping Country and people strong. These one-off works are hand-carved and hand-printed and finished with kopi, a culturally significant pigment from the artist's Country, processed through traditional practices to make an ochre-like paint.
Zena says, 'The inclusion of kopi manifests my Country and culture as physically ever-present within me. Circles embody holistic knowledge and continuation. Boomerangs speak to our technologies, our science, and the power of our ways of knowing, moving through time.'