Transplanted

The Gallows Gallery – Launceston College
11 June – 24 July, 2026

Tasmania was colonised by the British in the early nineteenth century. The works in this exhibition seek to re-examine that colonial history by taking fragments from the past and re-contextualising them from a present day viewpoint. I have a distant family connection to these events and have attempted to humanise the historical process in a tangible way. This re-engagement with the past attempts to acknowledge that history and to see it from a contemporary perspective.

The triptych, Transplanted: Unearthed Incidents from the Childhood of Susan Lyne/ Van Diemen’s Land 1828 was the initial catalyst for the exhibition. It references my mother’s great aunt, Susan Lyne, who arrived in Van Diemen’s Land from England 200 years ago in 1826. She was five years old and her family was granted land near what is now Swansea on the east coast.

In 1828, she and her older sister Betsy were sent into the tidal marsh near their home to guard a herd of young bulls and there was a documented incident* with the local Indigenous tribe and Susan was injured. She was always considered “delicate” and was occasionally strapped to the back of a plough so that she would be close to the healing powers of the “good earth”. In the work, innocent childlike memories flutter around her as she gazes up from the marsh. It was confronting to realise that my family had been part of the frontier violence of Australia’s colonial past.

Susan’s oldest brother John Lyne was the politician thought to be responsible for the bounty on the now extinct thylacine and there is reference to this in Bounty: A Family Legacy. The impact of moving from the other side of the world on domestic life is also referred to in works such as The Crossing: Resettlement.

Oranges and Sunshine: A Pattern of Lies alludes to the scandal of forcibly relocating poor children from Britain to Australia last century with the promise of “oranges and sunshine”. Instead many of them were destined for hard labour and life in institutions**

The notion of being transplanted – or moved – from one place to another forms the basis of this exhibition, which looks through the lens of distant family arrivals into Van Diemen’s Land 200 years ago. On a more recent personal level, my own experience of being transplanted from a small country town in north east Tasmania into Launceston to attend Launceston High School in the 1960s was an enormous shock. My four years as a student saw the transition of the school into Launceston Matriculation College and I returned again as an art teacher in the 1970s and later in the 1980s.