The Secret Life of Thistles, 2026

The Secret Life of Thistles reflects my enduring fascination with thistles. I present them as portraits, isolated from their environment and rendered in sharp, fragmented detail and radiant light, imbuing them with presence, significance, and individuality.
Ancient and remarkably resilient, thistles have long occupied practical, symbolic, and cultural roles. Yet through human movement and intervention, many have come to be regarded as “weeds” — strangers growing where they are deemed not to belong. Such labels reveal social and cultural attitudes rather than inherent qualities. Like migrants, they occupy shifting categories of belonging and exclusion, their identities shaped less by their nature than by our attitudes towards them. These anthropocentric distinctions between the desirable and the undesirable shape our relationship with the environment and contribute to both ecological and social crises.
My engagement with thistles is therefore both aesthetic and ecological. I see them as beautiful and resilient survivors, but also as reminders of nature’s resistance to human interference.
Created as a composite from CT scans, The Secret Life of Thistles presents a highly simplified, almost ornamental interpretation of the Illyrian thistle (Onopordum illyricum). Through luminous, radiating light, the work seeks to reveal the flower’s inner, mesmerising architecture and, renders visible both the seen and the unseen. Removed from reality and transformed into a mysterious, luminous form, the image evokes wonder and invites contemplation of the intricate beauty of the natural world.
My befriending of thistles, and my return to a non-judgemental admiration of their splendour, is ultimately a call for humility towards nature and a plea for a more thoughtful and peaceful coexistence between humanity and the living world.

Beata Tworek was born in Poland but has spent her adult life in Australia. With a grounding in art history from Poland, she completed her higher education in conservation of cultural materials and cultural anthropology in Canberra. For over 30 years she worked as a conservator at the National Gallery of Australia. She also taught conservation at the University of Canberra.
Beata Tworek’s lifelong career as an art conservator and her involvement in art and science culminated in her passion for art photography and photogravure. Her practice is centred on investigating the forms, textures and patterns of nature and producing images with strongly aesthetic qualities. She draws on the rich tradition of plants portrayed in painting, printing and photography while experimenting with advanced photographic techniques such as macro photography, computer tomography or specialised lighting techniques commonly used in art conservation. Beata is interested in a contemplative, focused approach to the study of harmony, colour and texture as features of aesthetic significance in her explorations of the natural world. Her work has been shown in both solo and group exhibitions.