Secret World: carnivorous plants of the Howard sand sheets

In 2015 Jacqueline Gribbin was invited by Nomad Art to participate along with four other Northern Territory artists in an artistic and environmental collaboration and workshop involving Greening Australia N.T., resulting in the exhibition ‘Secret World: Carnivorous plants of the Howard sand sheets’.

The Howard Sand Plains hold a diverse collection of Utricularia or Bladderworts – carnivorous flowers which thrive but whose habitat is under threat due to sand mining.

My whole focus shifted from grass and open bush to a whole new dimension, of tiny flowers that could be seen bobbing throughout the sand plains. They were accompanied by other beautiful creations, explosions of crimson lying in the water at their feet: Sundews. It suddenly became an effort to avoid stepping on them.

It is the landscape within which these little flowers, namely Bladderworts, that captures my attention as much as the flowers themselves, as it seems to be a confusion of mud, sand, grasses, seeds, flowers and water. This landscape doesn’t present itself in an obvious way with a traditional sense of perspective, unless I lie on my stomach and observe the miniature world.

But as I look at it, really look, from the side, from the top and from slanted angles, it becomes obvious this landscape is as much about what lies under the water and sand as what is above. The Bladderworts are vivid and charming flowers above, but below they are minute carnivorous traps.