Jayne Dyer (File photo)

By Valerie Sartor
China.org.cn columnist

Australian Jayne Dyer has been making art for a long time. In the early 90's this remarkable installation artist began travelling back and forth between her home country, Hong Kong and Beijing. "I came to China in 1994 to be part of an exhibition sponsored by Red Gate Gallery, Beijing and Meridian Gallery, Melbourne. I immediately wanted to come back," she said. "In 1996 I returned for three months, funded by an Asialink residency grant. I'm back here again, working on exhibitions and projects for Asia and Australia for 2008 and 2009."

Jayne Dyer, a very attractive woman of an interesting age, makes even more interesting art. She explained that her installations are directed at compelling people to review fundamental assumptions.

A series she is currently developing in Beijing, Greening, looks at environmental change. Like all her work Greening addresses issues on both micro and macro levels.

Over winter Dyer photographed over 200 structures made from timber scaffolding and green construction mesh, built to protect plants in designated areas throughout the capital. Back in her studio, in the artists' compound Feijiacun at Bei Gao, she has been on the alert for pruning working parties, to collect huge tree trunks and branches. Dyer has contracted artisans to build two and three meter high pine platforms. Trees are painted white and precariously placed on the platforms or lean upturned against walls, circled by leaf mounds, suggestive of shock shedding.

Reading Installation

There is a sense of fragility in the photographs, platforms and flora that captures the fragility of our rapidly changing global environment.