Beau Monde (pink) is a work by photographer and digital imaging artist Robyn Stacey in the Parliament House Art Collections.  

In 2001, Stacey started photographing the Macleay natural history collections of the Chau Chak Wing Museum, a mix of scientific specimens collected from around the world by three generations of the Macleay family which have been part of the University of Sydney collections since 1887.

Following a residency at the University in 2006, Stacey created this mesmerising work by pinning several hundred butterfly specimens onto a large velvet ball and photographing it in front of a black background.

Beau Monde literally means ‘beautiful world’ in French, but it also refers to an elite social milieu. In drawing on and reinterpreting the Macleay collection, Stacey invokes the beau monde of early Sydney, which included many ‘gentleman-collectors’ and amateur naturalists for whom seeking knowledge of the natural world was   a mark of social distinction. Thus, she invites us to use fresh eyes to look upon these specimens and consider the social context that produced this collection and its historical and enduring value.¹

Of her practice, Stacey says,

The way I work in selecting materials is to use myself as a benchmark. I am not a botanist or natural historian, but I have an interest in history and the environment. If you like, I represent the ‘everyman’, so my criterion was simply if I found it interesting then others would too.²

Robyn Stacey
Robyn Stacey was born 1952 in Brisbane, Queensland, is a Sydney-based photographic artist. She has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland (1977) and Master of Fine Arts from the University of New South Wales (1993). She has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Australia and overseas since the mid-1980s. Her photographic works are held in the collections of Artbank, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of Western Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Queensland Art Gallery.

References
1. Millner, Dr Jacqueline, “Robyn Stacey, Beau Monde”, STILLS Gallery, Sydney, 20 September-21 October 2006, University of Western Sydney, September 2006, p2.  
2. Richardson Elvis, Goffman, Sarah, “Robyn Stacey”, PHOTOFILE 78: The Archive Issue, Spring 2006, p19.