Image: Mervyn MUHLING Untitled (About moths) 1991, eucalyptus twigs, papier mâché, epoxy resin, cypress pine and plywood. QUT Art Collection. Purchased 1992.
This work is 50 centimetres high by 48 centimetres wide and is made from eucalypt twigs, papier mâché, epoxy resin, cypress pine and plywood. The work is displayed with two other works from this same series and the work on the far right is the work described.
A concentration of thin twigs are arranged together, lying flat and placed vertically down the right hand side of the work approximately 20 centimetres in width. It gives the impression of a thick gnarly tree trunk with its bark exposed. The twigs are in earthy brown and deep orange tones. On either side of this mass of twigs is placed a thicker branch bordering the conglomeration of organic matter inside.
Running from top to bottom down the central branch sitting parallel is another branch similar in size. At the top of this branch is a blob of papier mâché terracotta in colour and utilised to bind another branch which fans out and curves down to the right. Seven relatively uniform and neat horizontal rows of twigs then fill the space between the curved branch and the central branch that runs the length of the work. The orange red colour of the papier mâché adhesive employed is visible peeking through beneath these twigs.
This series of artworks were constructed from a labour-intensive technique using papier maché as an adhesive to bind the wooden sticks in place. Every tiny ball of maché and twig was painstakingly cut and sculpted, and each layer built upon the previous one, resulting in a perfectly balanced and ordered composition.
The materials take on a new form while speaking to their past, the wood displaying clear signs of their previous life-knotted and scarred. The role of the papier-mâché, tightly rolled and formed into cocoon-like shapes, is both aesthetic and functional. The objects bear an uncanniness, as they are both 'of' and in the landscape-made from the detritus of the natural world to replicate another form found in nature, the lepidoptera, the order of winged insects known as butterflies or moths.
Merv Muhling taught at predecessor to QUT, the Brisbane College of Advanced Education and had a profound influence as a dedicated educator of artists and art teachers in Brisbane for many years.
This work was acquired for the QUT Art Collection in 1992.