Only a Gong Girl Knows the Feeling

You can take the girl out of The ‘Gong, but you can’t take The ‘Gong out of the girl.

Growing up in Wollongong on the south coast of NSW, Kylie Banyard knows what it is like to be watched over by the maternal presence of the ancient rainforest that is Illawarra escarpment. She is fully aware that the protection offered by this presence gave her the strongest sense of security.

Couple this sense of security with the ever-changing and always inviting shoreline of more than 20 beaches and just as many ocean pools then you will begin to understand that living along this narrow strip of land ‘between the mountains and the sea’ provided an insight into the power and the beauty of nature.  Being ‘tucked in’ at night by the mountains and rocked to sleep by the sounds of the crashing waves is in Banyard’s DNA.

Now living far from her coastal hometown and making a new life in country Victoria on the lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung people, Banyard is raising her young family with the urgent desire to provide the protection and security she grew up with. The ‘soft landing’ she wants for her children can be viewed through the lens of her own history - mermaiding in the salt waters off the Illawarra coastline and soft-footstepping through the rainforests of the escarpment.

 She teaches her children of the magic and the power of the natural environment. Inviting them to touch, to feel, to smell all the small wonders of the bush in her adopted home hoping that they too have the same sense of protection that was instilled in her by her own elders.

soft landing is a homage to an ancient land in all its forms. It shows us that protection can be the touch of a flower; the gentle stepping through the bush or a glimpse of sunlight on the face of a child. Banyard finds the very essence of ‘home’ deep in the landscape. A landscape that will provide the softest of landings for her and her family. Wherever that is that they land.

 Tess Allas

Curator, writer and fellow ‘Gong Girl’

All photographic documentation by Jessica Maurer Photography

soft landing

Verge Gallery the University of SYDney

2 September - 4 October 2024

the garden, 2024, acrylic and cyanotype on plant dyed cotton, recycled cotton, with polyfil, wool

large soft landing wall, 2024, acrylic and cyanotype on cotton and canvas, 300 x 500cm

Hal with artichoke and fennel, 2024, acrylic and oil on cherry ballart dyed canvas, 53 x 71cm.

Hal with fennel, 2024, acrylic and oil on cherry ballart dyed canvas, 53 x 71cm.

Touching african daisy, 2024, acrylic and oil on turmeric dyed canvas, 137 x 168cm.

Wes engulfed, 2024, acrylic and oil on cherry ballart dyed canvas,

53 x 71cm

Red Ironbark soft ground, 2024, acrylic on canvas, cinerea dyed canvas, cyanotype and recycled polyfill, 37 x 168cm

Red Ironbark soft ground 2, 2024, acrylic on canvas, red iron bark dyed canvas, 37 x 168cm

Hal with a face full of correa, 2024, acrylic and oil on hawthorn dyed canvas, 53 x 71cm.

soft landing ~ artists’ statement

You touch a blushing blossom’s petal 

I sink into canvas soaked in plant colour    

We hold soft Correa to our chests

soft landing is a love song dedication to my two sons. Made in response to the challenges of raising boys within a violent world in deep social and ecological crisis, the works in this exhibition represent an urgent desire to shower my children in flowers and a sense of radical hope for their futures. Marking the second in a series of exhibitions inspired by a walking ritual performed with my youngest son in which we document our affective encounters touching and talking to plants. Together we photograph each other’s careful touch, wilfully suspending the moment of contact as we talk about the way a plant feels and smells. This playful process holds a certain magic for us, drawn from the rhythms of everyday life, it brings us closer to together as we share in the experience of learning how to connect with this place we call home – as we try to make our way as settlers and visitors on the unceded Country of the Dja Dja Wurrung people. Across the exhibition, the moment of touch is represented in paint and invited through the haptic quality of textiles and soft sculpture. Touching and talking to plants highlights what is at stake when living earthbound – like a plant. These works, and the collaborative processes involved in their making, question what careful time spent encountering and contemplating the lives of these enigmatic more-than-human keepers-of-place might teach us about other, more gentle ways of being in and of the world.1

1 Clark, Martin. The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree, ‘On Being Sessile’, Camden Art Centre, 2021, p. 183.