Re-Wilding by Annelies Jahn & Jane Burton-Taylor

Opening event: Saturday 28 June, 1:30-3:30pm to be opened by Karen Smith, Aboriginal Heritage Officer
Exhibition dates: Thursday 26 June - Sunday 13 July (open Wed-Sun 11am-4pm)
Closing event: Sunday 13 July, 2-4pm with talk by Michael Hill, Head of Art History & Theory (National Art School)

A black and white image of an adolescent tree growing in a forest, against a backdrop of a white sheet
Image credit: Adolescent Tree by Annelies Jahn & Jane Burton Taylor (2025)

Artists

Annelies Jahn and Jane Burton Taylor have worked collaboratively, concurrent with their individual practices, for the past six years. They are both master’s graduates of the National Art School, Sydney, majoring respectively in painting and sculpture. Their joint work focuses on the natural world, responding to specific sites and natural phenomena, and falls into the context of Land or Eco Art. They have undertaken three residencies in bush sites in and around Sydney including a site-specific installation in the old Coal Loader for the North Sydney Art Prize last year. In 2023, they had an exhibition titled Tethered, a body of work exploring human beings layered current and historic relationship to preserved bush sites on Cammeraygal, Gadigal and Gundungurra Lands in New South Wales, Australia.

Exhibition Statement

Rewilding is a nature conservation strategy focused on restoring and protecting nature by allowing it to self-regulate. This exhibition explores rewilding, as a way of relating to the natural world and as an ecological concept. The artists have researched the original plant community of the immediate Camperdown area, now considered critically endangered. The resulting artworks incorporate scent, sound and scale, as well as the visual, to give visitors unique experiences relating to the original habitat. By revisiting the pre-colonial era, they reveal a glimpse of the intrinsic character of the local Wangal and Gadigal Lands. They have also grown local plants from seed and are gifting them to visitors to support local wildlife and biodiversity. Their belief is that rewilding is in part, the growing of an individual appreciation – and by implication a care - of nature, specifically the indigenous natural world of flora and fauna.

For more information on the exhibition, workshops or opening hours, please contact Annelies Jahn on annelies@jahn.com.au or 0412 608 469 or Jane Burton Taylor on janebt@ozemail.com.au or 0412 154 709.

Workshops & Talks

Sunday 29 June 12pm, performance by artists – adolescent wall drawing
Friday 4 July 11am-12:30pm – drawing workshop
Sunday 6 July 12pm, artist talk
Wednesday 9 July 11am-12:30pm - Re-Wilding Native Plant workshop (with Inner West Council staff Adam Ward, Team Leader Ecology Projects & Raychel White, Supervisor Community Nurseries)
Register via Humanitix (free event)