A RECENT COMMISSION

BY QUEENSLAND CALLIGRAPHER RUTH VENNER

After the successful Exhibition ‘Going to the Gums’ in 2007 at the Redland Museum commemorating the Centenary of the Lazaret on Peel Island*, a grant was obtained from the Queensland 150 year celebrations to produce a book of the exhibition.

The exhibition featured fifteen three metre floating panels on fabric by Ruth Venner all of which were individually featured in the book.

See Ruth’s comments on the making of the panels below

The book was launched at a showing of the ”Going to the Gums” Travelling Exhibition which was held at Redcliffe Museum earlier this year.

It was later advised that the book was being considered for an award by the National Trust Queensland Heritage Awards, to be presented by Her Excellency, the Governor of Queensland, Ms Penelope Wensley AO, on Thursday 27th August 2009 at the newly renovated Old Government House in Brisbane.

The book, which features the whole fifteen floating panels, was awarded a ‘Silver’ and the award was received by Rhonda Bryce from the Friends of Peel Island who had been the organiser of both the Exhibition and the publication of the book.

It has been decided that the ‘Going to the Gums’ will become a long-term exhibition at Fort Lytton at the mouth of the Brisbane River.

*The Exhibition and the book were both to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Founding of the Lazaret (Leper Colony) on Peel Island which has the distinction of being the only Leper Colony in Australia that housed European inmates as well as what they called in those days ‘Coloured’, which included all other races.

The Lazaret was still functioning in the 1950’s before it was finally closed down as the disease became treatable by more modern drugs.  The term “Going to the Gums’ was what the patients themselves called dying.

Peel Island is one of the beautiful islands in the Moreton Bay Marine Park east of Brisbane.

For further information about the book and Friends of Peel Island visit: www.fopia.org.au/