The Friends of the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne have been involved with the development and promotion of the work of professional and amateur botanical illustrators since 1990, and are delighted to present this, the twelfth biennial The Art of Botanical Illustration exhibition.
This exhibition contains 139 paintings selected from 330 submitted. They represent the work of 73 artists from around Australia and overseas, including that of talented students attending Botanical Illustration classes run by the Friends of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne at the Gardens.
The works were selected on the following basis:
They must also be identified and named accurately according to standard botanical practices.
Artists of all levels of experience were encouraged to submit works for selection. The final collection on display offers an outstanding opportunity to acquire works by talented emerging artists as well as those by artists with well-established national and international reputations. For some artists this will be the first time they have exhibited at a major exhibition. We are delighted to be able to offer so many artists the opportunity to display their work alongside that of their peers.
This exhibition will be the tenth at which the Friends have donated funds to the Royal Botanic Gardens for the purchase of works for inclusion in the State Botanical Collection held in the National Herbarium of Victoria. From the 2012 exhibition, works by Fiona McKinnon and Dorothee Nygh de Sampayo Garrido were acquired by the Gardens in this way. In addition works by Bev Lewis and Sandra Sanger were purchased by funds from the Directors Circle for the State Botanical Collection.