Jewellery works that reimage botanical specimens from early European settlement of Australia

RESEARCH BACKGROUND The work explores place, colonisation, migration and cultural identity through engaging with the exhibition theme of transplantation. Bastin draws on research of 2D Japanese anime to develop a sense of otherness in these jewellery works, using the works to imagine how European settlers experienced the unfamiliarity of the Australian landscape. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION The jewellery materialises as idiosyncratic botanical samples and creates a fictional narrative that combines an anime aesthetic with reimagined Australian flora. Through vivid colours and stylised forms Bastin creates hybridised objects that are hand-carved, moulded and cast polyurethane with highly saturated colour and a toy-like patina. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE The exhibition which featured these works was the first time that jewellery works that combined anime sensitivities with reimagined Australian flora were exhibited in Australia. Placed alongside current leading contemporary jewellery makers from both the UK and Australia, each artist added to the narrative of displacement in relation to British Australian settlement and immigration. The artists included Lin Cheung (UK), Jack Cunningham (UK), Joungmee Do (Australia).The exhibition was developed by the University of Lincoln and assisted by the National Centre for Craft and Design and funded by Arts Council England. In Australia the exhibition toured to the following venues: Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery; Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga, Webb Gallery Griffith University; Macquarie University, NSW; Craft Victoria; Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery. The exhibition also included a publication: Bloxham, J, ed. 2012, Transplantation: A Sense of Place and Culture, 2012, University of Lincoln Press, Lincoln, UK.