Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Fierce Maternity, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney.

Colombian-Australian artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso, presents her latest series of sculptural forms inspired by and crafted from nature. An expansion on her acclaimed 2021 Gumnuts series, this latest body from one of Latin America’s most celebrated artists, based in Sydney since 1997, celebrates the beauty and astonishing complexity of native Eucalyptus woody gumnuts: wondrous, tough, expressive forms, with which she feels a close affinity, encapsulated in the exhibition title, Fierce Maternity.

There are over 700 (or 900, depending on who you ask) unique species of Eucalypt, almost all of them native to Australia. Responding to the local environment in which it must survive, the tree adapts and so of course do its (non-edible) fruits, more commonly known as gumnuts. Some for example are minuscule, and others gigantic, whilst all, Cardoso has found, display stunning bio-geometries.

Over recent years Cardoso has become somewhat of an expert on gumnuts, researching and sourcing diverse examples of their woody forms from all around the country.

Created from 24 unique species, sourced from diverse native Australian habitats, these latest works, presented in Fierce Maternity, reflect her lifelong fascination with science and nature; a fascination that has indelibly informed her acclaimed artistic practice.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is an extraordinary six-meter-long installation consisting of over 50 meticulously constructed gumnut spheres, whilst on the surrounding walls, a fresh series of her intricate gumnut wall drawings, echoing and elevating the natural patterns Cardoso has observed in the environment all around us.

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