The Board of Eucalypt Australia is delighted to announce the 2024 Dahl Fellowships.
Geri Barr’s fellowship “The Art of Listening” will encourage listening to the landscape and highlight the extraordinary diversity and beauty within the eucalypts’ 900 plus species. Geri will extract eucalypt colours and create large-scale artworks from dyed materials in textile and paper, sculptural and framed. Geri aims to highlight the uniqueness of the different species through colour and to inspire and promote discussion of the cultural and conservational importance of eucalypts. Acknowledgement of “people and place” will be crucial. Geri will source eucalypts from across the country and will conduct workshops and exhibit the resultant large body of work. You can follow Geri through her instagram @geri.barr
Dr Keg de Souza’s fellowship “Got by Dan: The story of Burramattagal man Daniel Moowattin“ is a research-led artwork centring the importance of cultural knowledge through highlighting the lesser-known story of Burramattagal man Daniel Moowattin’s role in the early documentation of eucalypts. Moowattin worked closely with botanist George Caley, the first settler to make a deep effort to study eucalypts. Caley relied heavily on Moowattin, who was a good climber, to collect buds and flowers from tall eucalypts for his specimens. Caley marked these specimen sheets with the words ‘Got by Dan’. While Caley’s work is well documented, Moowattin’s story is lesser- known.
Using NSW Herbarium specimens marked ‘Got by Dan’ and working with members of the local Dharug community to collect specimens of these same eucalypt species on Dharug land (the lands they were originally collected from), Keg will create a series of nature prints from these eucalypts featuring local language names and cultural knowledge shared by her Dharug collaborators, centring Indigenous knowledge and highlighting gaps and erasures in Western archives.
Keg will finalise with a public exhibition and an Artist’s book. You can follow Keg through her instagram @fakinandkeggs
Pete McCurley’s fellowship “Retrieving knowledge forward: Fire, forests and human custodial responsibility” aims to understand the changes to South Eastern eucalypt forests across deep time, with an eye raised to the future. By researching traditional cultural uses, cultural fire and pre-colonial forest structure along with modern scientific fire ecology, ecosystem function, and the current forest structure, the study will inform better management of eucalypt forests in a changing climate and time. The specific aim is to bring Indigenous knowledge practices to bear in contemporary forest management.
Pete will be producing a four-part edited podcast series with themes: Past, Present, Future, All Time / Dreamtime, accompanying long form yarns for a deeper dive. You can follow Pete through his instagram @curlytimbers
The Board acknowledges and appreciates all applicants for the 2024 Dahl Fellowships. The quality and diversity of applications were varied, interesting and impressive.