Eugenie Kawabata:
Botanica Exotica: Unknown Civilisations

Eugenie Kawabata is an independent Naarm/Melbourne based designer and maker whose practice is located at the intersection of art and design. With a strong focus on materiality and sustainability, Kawabata’s work is defined by her skill and innovation in crafting objects from industrial waste, the artist stitching, dyeing, painting and impregnating the materials with resin to transform them into objects of value. She draws inspiration from the transformative power of design and focuses her approach on the tactile experiences of crafting objects, emphasising the design process as a hands-on endeavour.

 Botanica Exotica: Unknown Civilisations features a new body of works that are inspired by walks Kawabata took through Naarm/Melbourne’s parks and botanical gardens within a 5km radius from her home under the COVID lockdowns. These walks became a daily ritual and escape. The predictability and rigidity of the gardens’ formal design led Kawabata to examine the disrupters with the Victorian design construct: the messy, unbeautiful, untamed and unintentional.

 Captivated by the visual dialogue between exotic and native plant life, she was particularly taken by the often overlooked elements and tensions that coexistence presents: oozing resins and gums, scars and disfigurements caused by invasive micro-organisms, parasitic plants and exotic fungi. The unwanted guests. The vessels featured in this exhibition are manifestations of Kawabata’s botanical observations and provoke imaginings of what lies beneath the surface: the complex unseen networks that form ‘the unknown civilisations’. By inviting the viewer to challenge the disposability of everyday objects, Botanica Exotica: Unknown Civilisations asks us to consider the waste we create and reflect on our interactions with nature.