Tales from The Trees of Old

Presented by the Cindy Watkins + Fiona Francois + Joy Kachina

Exhibition Dates :
Thursday 5 – Sunday 15 February 2026
9:00am – 5:00pm daily

Opening Event :
Friday 6 February 2025, 6:00pm – 8:00pm

An exhibition by three artists exploring the mystique, fragility, and endurance of Tasmania’s ancient trees.
There are places in Tasmania where time slows, where the air hangs heavy with memory, and where the trees seem to whisper the stories of the land. These forests—Gondwanan remnants, old-growth sentinels, and endangered giants—hold millennia within their rings. Tales from the Trees of Old brings together three artists, each working in a distinct medium, to honour these extraordinary beings and to invite viewers into the quiet, myth-laden language of the forest.
Though their practices differ, the artists share a deep respect for the living elders of Tasmania’s landscapes. Their works do more than depict trees; they interpret them, listen to them, and speak in their stead. Through charcoal, textile, and photography, the exhibition becomes a collective act of witnessing—an echo of the forest rendered in pigment, fibre, and light.
Joy Kachina’s photographic works present the forest as both document and dreamscape. She captures what often goes unseen: the sheen of rain on ancient bark, the slow twist of branches shaped by centuries of wind, and the hollowed interiors of trees that feel like sacred chambers. Shot during long solitary treks into remote terrain, the images sit at the intersection of realism and reverie. Even the most literal compositions seem touched by myth, as though taken just after the forest revealed a long-guarded secret.
The lens lingers on subtleties—the glow of moss, the darkness beneath buttressed roots, the marks left by fire and regrowth. Each print becomes a meditation on endurance and fragility, honouring species that have survived ice ages, colonisation, and catastrophe, yet now face modern pressures of climate change and habitat loss.
In dialogue with these images Fiona Francois’ charcoal drawings—hyper-realistic yet carrying an otherworldly energy. Charcoal, a material born of fire, becomes a fitting medium for capturing trees that have known both creation and destruction. The artist often shapes driftwood, branches, or trunks into feminine forms, merging the human and arboreal in a way that suggests kinship rather than metaphor. These figures appear carved from shadow, echoing the lines of wind-sculpted wood and holding the quiet wisdom of something older than human time.
Fiona works with ceremonial precision, layering, erasing, and revealing until the form seems to rise of its own will from the paper. The result is both haunting and tender. These works invite viewers to consider our emotional connections to trees and the ancient, often overlooked relationship between human imagination and the natural world.
Completing the triad are the textile artworks—small in scale yet astonishing in detail. Using only a sewing machine and thread, Cindy Watkins creates hyper-realistic treescapes that feel intimate and meticulously observed. Each piece is built through dense, layered embroidery, with thousands of carefully guided stitches mimicking the textures of bark, foliage, and the forest floor. The moss that clings to trunks and stones appears uncannily lifelike, achieved through subtle variations in stitch direction, speed, and tension.
She “paints” with thread, guiding the machine with a level of control that borders on calligraphic. The surfaces come alive with detail: tiny knots that resemble lichen, smooth stitched passages that echo sunlit bark, and tonal shifts that capture the soft green hush of shaded moss. The works invite viewers to lean in, discovering new elements with every glance—much like studying the base of a living tree.
These embroidered pieces act almost like botanical specimens, preserving fleeting textures through a slow, deliberate process. Their delicacy stands in gentle contrast to the monumental subjects they depict, reminding us that the vastness of a forest is built from countless small wonders. Through her threadwork, Cindy honours the forest through patient observation and astonishing fidelity.
As these three practices intertwine, Tales from the Trees of Old becomes both sensory experience and environmental reflection. Each piece invites viewers to slow down and enter the rhythm of the trees—a rhythm measured not in hours or seasons but in centuries. Though rooted in conservationist intent, the works never slip into didacticism. Instead, they cultivate space for reverence, wonder, and grief.
This exhibition honours the trees not as scenery or resource but as living beings with agency, history, and vulnerability. It asks us to look closely, feel deeply, and recognise the responsibility we share in protecting these irreplaceable ecosystems. In the meeting of fibre, charcoal, and light, a collective voice emerges: a call to listen to the stories the trees have always been telling—and to ensure they are not silenced.