Artist Journal - PLANeT - a series of photosynthetic works - © Lloyd Godman

When it comes to working with grass and photosynthesis, the artist I admire most are Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey. Their work is simply fantastic. I was fortunate to meet them in New Zealand around 1997, and I wrote to them sometime after to let them know of my work with Bromeliads - They suggested they had talked over the idea of working the way I was with Bromeliads but had never got around to it. They were encouraging of the work I was doing - so I always felt that grass was their domain and Bromeliads mine.

However, the first year in Australia impressed on me the heat and dryness of the land, compared to New Zealand there is a huge difference. At the height of summer, the council announced a hard rubbish collection in our area. We dutifully collected up much of the junk that had been accumulated over many years to the road side for collection. Among the rubbish were the lids of several old corrugated water storage tanks. As the truck came up the road to collect the rubbish it suddenly hit me how beautiful the rust patina of the tank lid was with its circular form. I reclaimed them all from the road side and dragged them back into the property at the Bladessin Press.

They sat on the ground for several weeks before the circular shape suggested a globe - a map of the earth. It brought back memories of the Planet work exhibited in Gallery 101. I wondered what was the global perspective of the planet with Melbourne in the center. With google earth its is possible to see the planet from any perspective and yet we are so conditioned to a few standard view points of the planet.

From these view points, living in Australia and New Zealand we are conditioned to look upwards and outwards to Europe , Asia, or the USA. Its surprising how many maps of the world cut 20 to 30° off the bottom, where the antarctic is, which lowers the position of the equator and gives a false perspective of the world.

This Tank lid Globe is drawn with Melbourne at the centre - the dry continent is surrounded by water. The Southern ocean, the Pacific and the Indian ocean dominate, hold it centred like a frame. There is no Europe, North or South America - South Africa disappears along with the Middle East and most of Asia. Its a challenging perspective.

I drew this perspective on to the tank lid and cut it out with a pair of tin snips and a grinder. From here the idea occurred to lay it on the ground and let the grass grow through. This led to the work Planet II.

For the open studio at the Baldessin press in 2006 the work was suspended between a series of trees.

A map of the ocean surface currents illustrates how often the lower 20 - 30° is left off the map of the world.

In spring we watched the movie Jean de Florette by Claude Berri based with Gerard Depardieu as Jeanon the novel by Marcel Pagnol deals with how essential water is to plants. Establishing our orchard and vegetable garden during the extreme drought of 2005- 2006 in Australia was a challenge. Friends, like Ross and Wendy Mather who had won awards for their sustainable garden and had been gardening in the area for 20 - 30 years had nearly all abandoned there gardens through lack of water during this time. To much of Australia, Climate change suddenly became real with politicians beginning to give it some credibility and attention.

For the Yering Station sculpture awards I exhibited Planet IV . The work extended the map motif into the shape of a 3mm thick steel dish which projected upwards at an angle of about 60°. I cut the map in the dish with a plasma cutter. I used the tank lid to grow an image on the grass and placed the dish so, its shadow and the image on the grass would all interact as the sun moved across the sky. This aspect of the work where the traverse of the sun played a role related to the Summer Solstice series of works.

This laying of material on grass to form an image continued in the work LEAF 2007