Artists overcame distance and isolation to create giant mosaic installation

THE SYNERGY PROJECT

A large-scale mosaic art exhibition celebrating nature and resilience was the culmination of the year-long Synergy Project. The ground-breaking collaboration led by internationally renowned mosaic artist Helen Bodycomb and involving seven emerging artists was created across multiple locations during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020-21 in Victoria, Australia.

The ambitious collaboration titled ‘Synergy’ involved the arrangement of 450 mosaic vignettes. Each hand-cut item was fabricated into a sunflower-inspired assemblage using the bi-directional geometric algorithm of the Fibonacci sequence, to create a work measuring 2.8 metres in diameter. During 2020, each of the eight artists made cells at home, containing a tiny detailed scene featuring a human, animal or foliage narrative.

Inspired in part by Heironymous Bosch’s ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, ‘Synergy’ celebrates cultural residue and is a more uplifting, whimsical and comic vision of social survival and ‘thrival’ in a COVID/post-COVID world.

Drawing on Greco-Roman traditions, the artists also created ‘The Unswept Floor,’ a multi-panel floor installation depicting contemporary domestic foods and objects associated with eating, as if randomly strewn from a dining table.

During the Synergy Exhibition, Lot 19’s gallery annexe also hosted a salon hang of recent works by the eight Synergy artists: Helen Bodycomb, Christine Baines, Rhonda McGuiness, Ruth Maclaren, Louise Marson, Christine Nixon, Amanda Tattam and Judith Watson.

The Synergy Project enabled the group to gain strength and keep socially and creatively connected. Regular online meetings allowed concept development and planning and each person knew their ideas and style could be accommodated and celebrated to create a large unified work.

As Helen explains, “This project shows that while we were physically separated, we were connected by a common purpose and able to break down isolation. The project allowed us to build something positive in a year like no other, amidst a stressful time of great uncertainty,” says Helen.

The installations’ vignettes and elements were often made remotely and then mailed or personally delivered to Castlemaine and completed on-site.

“We worked together to overcome pessimism and develop a project that celebrates the ancient traditions of Roman mosaic, nature and resilience.“

Helen Bodycomb gratefully acknowledges Creative Victoria’s assistance through her receipt of a Sustaining Creative Workers Grant and the generous support of The Synergy Project Exhibition by the Regional Arts Fund, administered by Regional Arts Victoria.