About The Mallee Institute
Here at the Mallee Institute, we delve into the diverse world of the mallee forests and the life they support, from insects and plants to wombats, kangaroos, echidnas, emus and other mallee birds. We document the changing seasons, unusual discoveries, the sunsets, the spiderwebs, the marks and tracks which give us clues and indications of an intact biota… And not surprisingly, the mallee becomes a source of inspiration for art, photography, and the distillation of new ideas.
It is worth mentioning that the Mallee Institute is a private folly, with no sponsors or official support.
Photography: through a mallee lens
The Institute photographer uses several cameras to capture the moods and minutiae of the mallee. these include a Nikon P950 SLR with an 83x lens, an Olympus Tough with a microscope function, and an i-phone. The photographs below are randomly arranged for the time being and are uncaptioned. Before too long they’ll be sorted into categories, with new features to be added…
Philip Jones
The Longicorn Series
These artworks are based on graphite rubbings of distinctive insect trails, looping across the surface of fallen mallee logs. The original ‘artists’ are soft-bodied, iron-jawed grubs of the Longicorn beetle genus. They spend up to a year making their tracery of engravings, before emerging as beetles.
I hunt for these designs among fallen logs and branches in the mallee forests, and make graphite rubbings. Then I select watercolour inks i‘ve brewed from mallee plants, and begin painting. My art highlights the shapes and trajectories I perceive among the networks of tracks.
The Longicorn Series
