wow, the list just does not stop!
OK OK, let’s start with this below, straight copy+paste from the TWOTHOUSAND site, and online magazine/trend setter from Sydney.
You gave a tour this past Saturday in Darlington, which was fun and cheeky, light yet underpinned by big issues.
The article below was written by Nadia Saccardo, as part of the drumming-up of interest, and you end-up talking to 20something people on the streets of suburban Sydney.
We visited trifolium, oxalis, bidens pilosa and conyza, ligustrum lucidum and pittosporum ondulatum, celtis sinensi and olea africana, plantago and foeniculum, etc etc..
below the article, further down a couple of feedback ( honestly, no negative ones were offered )
Not that kind of Weed tour
In The Balance: Art for a Changing World Artist Diego Bonetto merges the natural world enthusiasm of David Attenborough with a particular fascination for flora. He also speaks with the kind of accented Italian that makes his conversation – which generally concerns an offset-lithographic proofing press called Big Fag or a love of ‘illegal’ plants called ‘weeds’ – sound all the more passionate.
Diego’s devoted a great many years to the study and preservation of unwanted flora, which in Australia includes just as many beloved plants as rogues. That wild fennel you ate the other night? Noxious weed. The agapanthus that your council planted on the strip? Totes weed. Same goes for the hardy yet delicious wild artichoke. The big problem, according to Diego, is that many weeds are only weeds because they compete with our monocultural systems of production. The poor dudes are in the wrong place at the wrong time. A lot of them are trying to do good, like create a stable ecosystem in places that we’ve fully logged, but they’re blacklisted.
In an effort to educate the rest of us on spontaneous flora, Diego is running ‘Weed Tours’ in different Sydney suburbs as part of the In The Balance: Art for a Changing World program. We’re strolling around Darlington with him on October 2, powered by flat whites and egg-n-bacon rolls, to find out what good bad stuff is growing in an area where lots of good bad stuff goes down.
From Krista: Thanks for the great tour Diego! I’ll not be looking at the median strip through the same eyes again…
From Nadia: thank you so much for the wonderful tour on Saturday. It was eye-opening to meet all of the local weeds and learn about their uses…
Still two Tours to go as part of the current program, one at Sydney Park, St.Peters, Sydney, the other at Casula golf course, Casula, both free, please book via MCA : education[at]mca.com.au
more info here
