Listen here!

A great chance to cast aside our inhibitions and pick up some hints about creating a fun and meaningful journal. It opened everyone's eyes to the treasures of TMAG, and helped reluctant writers to find a way of putting their words on paper, and hesitant sketchers to take the plunge with those pencils.

Members brought their children and grandchildren along to a great family event, and a chance for the kids to educate their elders on the finer details of augmented reality, a segment of the Dinosaur rEvolution funded by the Friends.

You can't sum up Australia's presence in Antarctica in an hour or two. We were given a taste of ice core sampling, a penguin-cam view of Southern Ocean krill, an insight into why Antarctic medicine is being used as a model for NASA's preparations for Mars, and a look at the outside and the inside of the new supply ship Nuyina. And I haven't even mentioned the penguin biscuits. In the words of one of our members, 'Extremely informative, well planned and with entertaining and engaging speakers'.

Miguel de Salas and Lyn Cave of the Tasmanian Herbarium did a great job of explaining what it's like to go bush in Tasmania in search of new plant species.

It's a squeezy venue but the forty members who managed to fit into the Herbarium were treated to a wonderful talk by Dr Gintaras Kantvilas, and a rare opportunity to see at first hand some of the carefully preserved specimens that form the Herbarium's collection. Gintaras recounted the tangled history of some of the specimens -- one was first collected by the French, impounded in Batavia by the Dutch, seized by the English in transit to the Netherlands, and finally returned to the French through patient dialogue between the scientists, despite their nations' continuing war footing.

A capacity crowd of 120 members enjoyed a walk through Lahaye's Garden at Government House, followed by a warm welcome from Her Excellency the Governor, an informative talk by gardener Tara Edmondson, and a superb selection of canapes themed for the occasion by chef Ainstie Wagner. 

Lahaye's Garden is a recreation of a vegetable garden established at Recherche Bay in 1792 by a French scientific expedition led by Rear Admiral Bruni D'Entrcasteaux.

To whet your appetite once again for both history and food, we invite you to read up about them by following the links below.

To see more photos of the event, go to our photo album.

A team of specialists recently completed an old-style ‘voyage of discovery’ on the RV Investigator, sampling animals living in the abyssal depths off the continental shelf on the east coast of Australia. Very little is known about the fauna from these depths (2500–4000m) and what is known is based on very old, patchy records from surveys a century ago. Dr Kirrily Moore, TMAG Collection Manager (Invertebrate Zoology), was one of the expeditioners, and she described her talk, Sampling the Abyss, as ‘a festival of weird fish, taxonomists, blogs and mud’: 

‘We experienced the highs of successful collection of samples from un-described species and very rarely collected species, viewing footage of live animals is an extreme environment and linking with live schools and researchers to spread news of our discoveries as they happened. We also experienced the lows of broken and lost gear, 2 am start times, bad weather and a LOT of mud!’

Further links: the blog website https://www.nespmarine.edu.au/abyss-landing-page

Tim’s summary of the voyage at https://theconversation.com/sludge-snags-and-surreal-animals-life-aboard-a-voyage-to-study-the-abyss-79924

The priapulid worms got a good run on US late night comedy shows, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPgVtWDljcU

More event photos in the website photo album.

The Derwent exhibition explores Tasmania’s Derwent River system and its complex natural and cultural histories. This exhibition includes videos and photographs by Tasmanian artists David Stephenson and Martin Walch, along with several historic works on paper and panoramic photographs from TMAG’s collections.

Our Friends event featured two distinguished TMAG speakers: Senior Curator of Art Dr Mary Knights, and Educator Richard Hale.

More event photos in the website photo album.

Inscription and Place presents a poetic exploration of place, family and objects told through contemporary jewellery.

During 2016-17, four Tasmanian jewellers worked with the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s Henry Baldwin Bequest collection on a project re-interpreting, reframing and contextualising history and memory through the jewellery object. Bequeathed to TMAG in 2008, the Baldwin Collection was the largest single donation in the museum’s history and contained among other things, jewellery, diaries, letters, books and small domestic objects which speak to the lives of the women of two of colonial Hobart’s leading families, the Manings and Knights.

The resulting artworks fuse references to the forms and materials of objects from the collection with traces of the lives of the women and an overlay of elements from the artists’ own lives and connection to place.

After an introduction by Senior Curator of Decorative Arts Peter Hughes, participating artists Alexandra Parish, Janine Combes, Sarah Jones and Sophie Carnell told us about the women who were their inspiration, and the process of creation, while we viewed their work.

More event photos in the website photo album.

We listened to internationally renowned Tasmanian printmaker Milan Milojevic in conversation with Andrew Harper about his exhibition Wunderkammerama, presented by Dark Mofo and Clarence City Council.

A wunderkammer — cabinet of curiosities — of prints, projections, dioramas and constructed objects inspired by the imaginary flora and fauna from Jorges Luis Borges’s The Book of Imaginary Beings (1957), giving form to ideas of homeland, memory and myth. Overlaid upon this inspiration was Milan's own experience of growing up as a first generation Australian, son of a Hydro worker. 

Thanks to Clarence City Council and the Friends of Rosny Farm for inviting us to share this captivating evening.