Carolyn Young

The 'Botanical Print' fabric, in collaboration with designer Bianca Spender (2020).

Commission for Ginninderry, "Stories from Ginninderry"  Project

Commissioned to make artworks and assist with writing accompanying text. 

'How Does Your Garden Grow?', Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales (3 February - 18 March 2017).

For four consecutive years, I photographed the produce from my garden, focusing on the mass of harvest, using the still life form. The  photographs 'Cottage Garden' and 'Vegetable Garden', continues this documentation, but instead showing a morning's gathering of plants in different stages of growth on the first and second day of summer 2016. The circle format was chose to echo this continual cycle of life in the garden.

Stockland Shellharbour, New South Wales

For this commission I was asked to employ field-based research in answering the question, "Who are we, anyway?" My artwork reflects on the collective experiences, memories and knowledge that inform the Shellharbour community. Featured in the photograph are plants used by D'harawal people (local Aboriginal people) during the 'hot and dry' season and European artefacts, all sourced from Shellharbour. Because of the resolution required to produce a 19m long photograph, each plant and artefact was photographed separately. Once the scale and internal grid distances were finalised, the grid was built in Photoshop.

OUT THERE Billboard Art Project

This commission for the Centre for Contemporary Photography and City of Yarra provided the opportunity to bring the grassy woodlands to the city.

For a number of years I have been documenting grassy woodlands in NSW and Victoria. Once common, these ecosystems have been reduced to small pockets amongst farmed land, along roadsides, across reserves and in tucked away cemeteries. Responding to ecologists and landholders, I return to the same sites and shoot seasonally. Represented in these two photographs are intact grassy woodlands, and woodlands that have been cleared and fertilised for sheep pasture. Grassy woodlands that have been fertilised will never support the same diversity of native plants again, but left alone and unmanaged, they will support a mass of weeds. Collecting from these landscapes, I aim to reveal something potentially lost in a traditional landscape photograph: the diversity at our feet, in the shrub layer and the trees above. The repetitive still life structure across my photographs highlights the change in biodiversity as land management changes. The images urge viewers to reflect on the past, present and future of these woodlands.

Portrait of a Nation, Unmade Edges- Distinctive Places: Hall, Centenary of Canberra

Artists were commissioned to create art projects which responded to the place naming and history of the villages within the Australian Capital Territory.

Flora of the Greater Sydney Region

This photography series was created with BUSHY Landscapes to help celebrate the beautiful flora of the Greater Sydney Region. Featuring plants and specimens that are representative of coastal, woodland and littoral rainforest communities.

The Sydney based company BUSHY Landscapes specialises in landscape design, ecological restoration, and horticulture.