The Friends of the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne are proud to have been involved since 1990 with the development and promotion of the work of professional and amateur botanical illustrators, and are delighted to present this, the eighth biennial The Art of Botanical Illustration exhibition.

In this exhibition are 168 paintings selected from almost 370 submitted. They represent the work of 86 artists from around Australia and overseas. The works were selected on the following basis: that they should accurately represent the form and botany of the chosen subject; they should adequately convey the characteristics of the species or variety; and they should be an artistically pleasing, balanced and considered work of art. They must also be identified and named accurately according to standard botanical practices.

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 this opportunity to display their work.

This exhibition will be the sixth 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 2004 exhibition, works by James Hobill, Ruth Jackson, Sandra Sanger and Jennifer Wilkinson were acquired by the Gardens in this way. RBG funding permitted the acquisition of an additional painting by Robyn Goding.  

A portable document format (ADOBE PDF) version of the catalogue is available for download from here

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