THE CERTAINTY OF UPHEAVAL
Parallels of Place, presents an understanding of landscape in which
ecology, climate, geography and the visible shape and character of the
earth do not have one single relationship with humanity, but shift between
states of balance and tumult. Given enough time, shuddering earthquakes,
calving icebergs and species extinction will interrupt periods of stability,
before just as surely subsiding into illusory quietude.
MONUMENT
Monumental time - the time in which the isosceles of India bunched
up into sedimentary Himalayan folds - has no need for minutes, hours
or dynasties. On canvas, David Ledger reveals the stillness and slow
motion of monumental time as single dusks and dawns elapse, washing
inconsequentially over mountains and rivers. Each of these impassive
terrains welled up from Ledger’s imagining, without reference to named
or visitable sites. Their sentinel-like prominences and glassy waters seem
nonetheless fundamental and ancient, symbolic of the earthy arenas within
which life and culture churns. Atop these natural monuments David paints
the works of humanity, which cling at the landscape, emulating its longevity.
TURBULENCE
In Meckering, monumentality has given way. Scattered crumbling masonry,
cracked walls and broken lamp glass comprise the scars of 1968, when the
rocky earth leapt in oceanic waves and shook the town down. To measure
the legacy of this extraordinary quake, one looks not to the Richter Scale,
but to the resilient, things-will-happen Meckeringite outlook. Readiness
accompanies an acceptance of sustained potential catastrophe. From
a vein running between Meckering to a worldwide network of chafi ng
tectonic plates, Lyn Nixon takes the pulse of the earth, detecting and
recording the dispersed evidence - cracked plasterwork, rattling plates,
swinging lamps, seismic bass-note vibrations in the pit of your gut - of an
incessant, thumping core. Uncertainty reigns, she reminds us.
PRECARIOUSNESS
If land is the perennial protagonist of geological time, Megan Christie
identifies its antagonists: developers, prospectors and polluters whose
modification of land outstrips any ecological cycle of decline and renewal.
In riposte, Christie camouflages herself against nature, working to match its
slowness and wastelessness: endemic Australian hardwoods are fashioned
into objects that are resolutely useful, versatile and robust. Cloistered
within, a series of tableaux recount cautionary tales in which the course of
ecology is derailed by poachers, hunters, land clearers and unscrupulous
consumers. Christie marries storytelling, craftsmanship and function,
inculcating each length of timber with as rich a case for thoughtful land
management as possible.
TRANSCENDENCE
Power and precariousness pass back and forth between humanity and land.
Elsewhere, there is a second nature: built of electric light, RGB pixels and
binary information, where cycles of ecological damage and natural disaster
are absent. Working from the screen to the canvas, Ian Williams transcends
physical land in favour of laying down its essential and infinitely variant
counterpart: digital landscape. Herein, nature can be clicked on, inverted,
rotated, designed, accelerated or brought to a standstill. The terrains
Williams paints have no depth or history. Rather, they’re made of layered
surfaces: a rendered surface in digital game space; the flat computer
screen; the face of a canvas. These two-dimensional Arcadias might
seduce us beyond the façade, if it weren’t for Williams’ bright, eccentric
brushstrokes. Eddying oils remind us that a painting is no more (or, as
much) a window onto nature as a computer screen.
Sheridan Coleman
