Flora, Bewildered

Lara Stoco's practice begins in the archive — art books opened to Botticelli, Vermeer, Frida Kahlo; botanical illustration folios; Victorian shell catalogues; faded portrait photography. These fragments are torn, cut, painted over, layered, and reassembled into dense, maximalist compositions that feel simultaneously ancient and entirely contemporary.

Each collage is made by hand in her Melbourne studio. Every print is produced on archival cotton rag or canvas by Southern Buoy in Mornington, Victoria — a studio that shares her commitment to materials that last.