We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the place now called South Australia, and all First Peoples living and working on this land. We celebrate the history and contemporary creativity of the world’s oldest living culture and pay respect to Elders – past, present and future. We acknowledge Kaurna, Peramangk and Ngadjuri peoples on whose lands our events and activities are imagined, planned and held. This always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.
Jackie Saunders, a Ngarrindjeri and Wirangu artist, and Laura Wills were drawn to the mineral collection at the South Australian Museum. Inspired by the magic of minerals they created Mineral Lines, an exhibition of dynamic and colourful works on paper.
Jackie was fascinated by the lines and shapes of agate. Laura looked at the ways land, ecology, history and human behaviour intersect.
‘We want to share something beautiful drawn from the often painful place of institutional collections.’
Jackie Saunders and Laura Wills, visual artists
They also created an impactful collaborative mural which spanned an entire wall. The work, titled Making Minerals, featured different shapes and patterns referencing minerals and constellations.
Mineral Lines received a Judges’ Commendation for the Advertiser Contemporary Art category in the 2022 SALA Awards.
Watch the video:
In this video, Jackie Saunders and Laura Willis discuss working side-by-side to create works in response to the mineral sciences collection at the South Australian Museum. (An audio described version is available below.)
Explore the exhibition:
What the artists say:
Jackie
‘I’ve really enjoyed working with Laura … I think our work will look really good together. I’ve enjoyed going to her studio and her coming in to my – like, the Tutti – studio. And I’ve just enjoyed doing this work. I like the patterns on the rocks and the colours. They inspired me.’
Laura
‘We sit together and paint. So working alongside each other physically is important to us. And Jackie likes to get in the zone and so do I. She plays music and I go there with that music. So we work intuitively. Leave room for our heart[s] and bodies to express themselves. Verbal language is the lesser form of communication when we paint.
As part of the project, we really wanted to do a mural because that’s been one of Jackie’s goals. We wanted to do a mural on the front of the Museum on the glass but the Museum said yes or maybe for a while, then backed away from the idea. Then we wanted to do a mural in this exhibition space but they were funny about us painting onto the walls. So that’s why we put the paper up and did the mural onto it.
We started by choosing colours. So we had cohesion to start with in that way.
We didn’t have disagreements but sometimes we would stand up and have a look … to try to make decisions about where things needed to be put. That kind of discussion. So I guess we took our time and worked together in making decisions.’