'Vitamin Sea' exhibition launch speech

The Vitamin Sea exhibition began not with a formal artist statement, but with a story — one that traces friendship, place, material, and contradiction. What follows is the opening speech I shared during the launch: a reflection on how a gothic, preservation-driven practice found its way into marine forms; how memory, innovation, and community shaped this body of work; and why beauty, colour, and collectability can coexist with a deeper unease about consumption and conservation.

This transcript sets the context for the exhibition as it was spoken — candid, personal, and grounded in process.

Transcript (5 minutes):

Hi, my name's Dina, I want to thank everyone for being here. We have friends that have driven down from Melbourne, from the Dandenongs, and a lot of new local friends that we have both made in this community all the way to Wonthaggi and towards Philip Island. Thank you so much everyone for their support.

I want to thank Jacqui for booking this amazing venue. Out of the blue she says, I booked this amazing venue, would you like to put something in the middle? I'm like, “Oh, yeah, sure!” … and then was, "Oh, heck!" Because if you knew my artwork prior to now, it's black skulls, as I do Gothic. So how am I going to do sea?

But sea is not foreign to me. I grew up in Melbourne, and we camped at Wilson's Prom every Christmas for a decade. I collected seashells, I pinned insects and collected bones; that's the sort of kid I was. I've been an artist since I was five, that's my earliest memories. Then as a young adult moved to Queensland where I had my kids (one of them is over there, Juan) and we lived on the Gold Coast and on Moreton Bay for 30 years.

So, marine became very intrinsic to a lot of my artwork. I always worked on nature-based themes, be it either forest or marine, and the creatures that inhabit them. Preserving those creatures and preserving those ecosystems is incredibly important to me and my artwork always reflects that.

About 30 years ago I started working with resin, these jellyfish are resin (I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a moment). I started working with resin and I took impressions of the mud flats at Moreton Bay of the creatures tracks to make resin panels. So, I've been familiar with resin for a long time, and I've been mixed media artist all that time and resin has come in and out for me during that. More recently I bought a 3D printer, a resin printer because I like innovation, people that have worked with me in the past know innovation is my working go-to. And it's taken me the better part of a year to work out how to make a figure in resin on my printer - because it's really technical, there's nothing easy about 3D printing!

When Jacqui said we’ll come here and I'm thinking, "omg, what am I going to do?" Well, I was doing some 3D printing classes and … the easiest shape to make is a blob. Hello, jellyfish! And the penny dropped, I can make jellyfish. And so here we are.

These jellyfish are made with resin - I've 3D printed the bell shape, then I've hand coloured, hand iridized, and handmade the tentacles. The sea cucumbers are all printed and so are the little sea anemones. I was already doing preservation of butterflies in glass domes, so this was just an extension of that sort of gothic oddities I was already working on.

I was able to work with Jacqui's amazing colors and help put together this exhibition.

An important thing I mentioned is conservation; there's a terrible irony about using 3D printing and using resin because it is plastic … and its plastic that's choking our oceans and our waterways. So, these are museum specimens showing the risks we face as consumers, and my artwork over this next 18 months is going to be dedicated to that consumerism versus conservation. It's hypocritical. We live in beautiful plastic filled homes with plastic filled cars and yet we have a hypocrisy about conservation; and so, my work is going to become very intent on that message.

But in the meantime, it's bright, cheery and colourful and (thank you), yes highly collectible.

Thank you everyone for your support and if you have any questions, come and see either of us and have a wine!!