Exhibition essay written by Rachael Parsons, Director or NERAM (New England Regional Art Museum, NSW, Australia) October 2025

Oh, the stories they could tell

by RACHAEL PARSONS

The gum tree, or eucalyptus, occupies a central place in the visual and cultural history of Australian art, and more broadly within the post-colonial Australian psyche. Its distinctive, sinuous form and fibrous bark have inspired artists for over two centuries, evolving from a subject of colonial curiosity to a powerful symbol of place and identity. Early European painters such as John Glover and Eugene von Guerard approached the eucalyptus through the lens of the picturesque and scientific realism, attempting to reconcile its irregular beauty with imported artistic conventions. By contrast, the late nineteenth-century painters of the Heidelberg School—Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin—embraced the gum tree as emblematic of a new, distinctly Australian vision and landscape tradition.

In the twentieth century, the eucalyptus became a site for modernist experimentation and cultural reflection. Grace Cossington Smith, Margaret Preston and Sidney Nolan each reinterpreted the tree’s formal and symbolic potential, while contemporary artists continue to explore its ecological, spiritual and political resonances. The ghost gum (Corymbia aparrerinja) is the iconic tree that Albert Namatjira depicted as a dominant figure within his custodial homelands of the Central Desert. For First Nations artists, the gum tree is not merely a motif but a living presence—an embodiment of Country and a repository of ancestral knowledge.

Gum trees are a defining feature of cultural depictions of the Australian landscape—ubiquitous, distinctive, and symbolic not only of the nation’s physical environment but also of its collective identity. From Ned Kelly to Picnic at Hanging Rock, from Burke and Wills to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the gum tree appears as a constant presence in the background, setting the scene and unmistakably declaring: this is Australia. Its pale trunks, tangled branches and shimmering leaves have shaped both the visual and emotional language through which the Australian landscape is imagined.

Many depictions of the gum tree play into the trope of the heroic and brutal Australian landscape, imagery deeply rooted in the continent’s ecology and colonial experience. Australia’s aridity, poor soils and recurring fires forged an environment unlike any other—one early European settlers perceived as harsh, alien and unrelenting. The eucalyptus, with its peeling bark, twisted limbs and flammable oils, became the perfect emblem of this strangeness—its very physiology read as a metaphor for endurance and survival. Over time, this vision evolved into a national mythology: the bush as a proving ground for toughness and self-reliance, and the gum tree as both witness and participant in that story.

In Oh, the stories they could tell, Amy Stapleton continues this long tradition of responding to the eucalyptus as both subject and symbol, yet she moves away from the rhetoric of struggle and heroism that has often defined it. Her works offer an intimate perspective on the gum tree, focusing on the subtle variations of surface, pattern, texture and colour that reveal its quiet resilience and living complexity. Through careful observation and sensitive material practice, Stapleton reclaims the gum tree from its mythic associations and restores it as a site of tenderness, memory and connection.

For Stapleton, the gum tree stands as a symbol of womanhood—both act as guardians and caretakers, providing nourishment, shelter and continuity. Each weathers the demands of their environment, shaped by time and circumstance, yet continues to stand with strength and grace despite the scars they bear. Through this lens, the tree becomes not only an emblem of the Australian landscape but also a vessel for embodied histories and emotional terrain, connecting human and ecological experience through shared endurance and care. This parallel extends into Stapleton’s material process. Her surfaces echo the textures of bark and skin, layered and weathered through repeated gestures and mark-making. The accumulation of pigment and the visibility of each trace recall both the physical resilience of the tree and the emotional endurance of the body.

There is also an implicit act of ecological care within Stapleton’s work. Her project comprises one hundred studies, each based on the unique bark pattern of an individual gum tree she has encountered in the landscape. Every work is both a portrait and an act of attention—an intimate record of encounter between artist and tree. Extending this relationship beyond representation, the sale of each study contributes directly to the planting of a new tree through the regeneration initiative Fifteen Trees. In this way, Stapleton’s practice enacts the very cycle of care it depicts, transforming observation into restoration and creative practice into ecological renewal.

Stapleton’s Oh, the stories they could tell reminds us that the gum tree—so long a symbol of endurance, identity and belonging—remains a living conduit between art, people and place. Through her work, this most familiar of trees is reimagined as a mirror for human resilience and a quiet gesture of environmental hope.