Through the Looking Glass: lutruwita is an ode to the otherworldy nature of the island of lutruwita/Tasmania, where artist Emily Ebdon is born and raised.

Within the artwork. Kunanyi sits as the backdrop and is the big mountain that overlooks the city of Hobart. This perspective of Kunanyi is view seen from Emily’s kitchen window. Within the shadow of Kunanyi we see the stripes of the sadly extinct Thylacine, wiped out by the impacts of colonisation.

Bruny Island is home to a wild population of over 200 rare white Bennett’s wallabies, which owe their snowy fur and pink eyes to albinism and are often seen roaming Adventure Bay at sunrise and sunset, and the sun is setting in this digital painting also, and so 2 of these wallabies also appear. These wallabies are uniquely Tasmanian and remind Emily of the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.

The white rabbit has become a central icon to psychedelic culture and communities and in Tasmania we also have unique and thriving fungi, notably the Psilocybe subaeruginosa ‘Golden Tops’ as they are locally known, are have psychoactive effects – ‘magic mushrooms’. In a reimagined Tasmanian ‘Wonderland’.

Fly agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria) are the red and white spotted mushrooms we associate with ‘Wonderland’ and ironically, they thrive in Tasmanian gardens as a poisonous, introduced species.

Another introduced species – the opium poppy, also appears in the artwork. Tasmania has an established, very successful poppy industry, where at its height, Tasmanian poppy manufacturers provided up to 80% of medicinal morphine globally. Poppies grow like weeds and ornamental and opium poppies grow in antique gardens around TAS. Their seeds fly on the wind after blooming, it’s not uncommon to see beautiful poppies growing out of the cracks in pavements around Hobart.

The sun and sunset are an element Emily has taken from a painting of one of her favourite Australian artists, also a peer, Brett Whitely – this sun appears in his large scale painting, ‘Alchemy’ (1973), it’s become a reoccurring motif in her art.