Image: Dr Kathryn Green
Stories and Structures - New Connections exhibition, brings together a story-telling and image-making tradition developed over 60,000 years or more, with scientific imaging created by high-tech instruments.
This exhibition explores images that pass on knowledge and shape our understanding of the world. Rich visual parallels between the representations seen in many Indigenous artworks and the microscopic structures hidden in the natural world, reveal unexpected and intriguing similarities.
The artists who have participated in this exhibition come from around Australia and have brought their own styles and traditions to produce works that reveal the depth of these recurring visual themes, giving us new cross-cultural perspectives on how we all know and understand our world.
The image on the right was captured by Dr Kathryn Green. Cells in a fig leaf. Like the gum leaves, the fig leaf cells contain dome-like chloroplasts that capture the sun's energy to make starch. The starch fuels the tree's growth allowing it to provide food and shelter for birds, animals and insects. These trees also provide a wealth of resources for Aboriginal people.
The identity of the black areas remains a mystery.
The area in this image is 52 micrometres across (1 micrometre is one thousandth of a millimetre).
All the micrographs in this exhibition were captured on Microscopy Australia instruments in labs across the country.
