Wonder + Dread: Art in the Land of Weather Extremes.
Pleased to announce two new works are included in Wonder + Dread and it is very special to be apart of this crucial debate. Both works are recent diptychs that span 189 years of landscape and applied geographic moderation. The works form part of a project on fire that began 2016.
Junction of the Buchan and Snowy Rivers, Gunaikurnai Country (1881- 2020), 2020,
pigment ink print, diptych: 32.6 × 113cm.
Works Included
1. Junction of the Buchan and Snowy Rivers, Gunaikurnai Country (1881- 2020), 2020
pigment ink print, diptych: 32.6 × 113cm (above)
2. The River Derwent and Hobart Town, Lutruwita (c1831- 2019)
pigment ink print, diptych: 32.6 × 86cm
‘In this series of diptychs, Alan McFetridge has placed prints of 19th century Australian landscape paintings alongside recent photographs taken at the same locations. These comparisons reveal three perspectives. The 19th Century works present a vision of the Australian landscape through a colonial lens. What those early artists unknowingly also captured was a landscape under the careful management of First Nations Peoples. We see thinned trees, epicormic growth, burnt logs within open park-like vistas and fuel reduction. The 20th Century views offer a startling contrast. In Gippsland, the land has been decimated by Black Summer fires. In Tasmania the once carefully managed land has been overrun by trees and scrub.’
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Reviews
The Australian - Review, Wonder and Dread at Shoalhaven Regional Gallery by Christopher Allen
Alan McFetridge has rephotographed the sites of two colonial views, John Glover’s The River Derwent and Hobart Town (c. 1831) — a picturesque area named “Salvator’s Glen” in recollection of the 17th-century landscapes of the Neapolitan Salvator Rosa — and Eugene von Guerard’s lithograph of the Junction of the Buchan and Snowy Rivers (Plate 9 in Eugene von Guerard’s Australian landscapes, 1866-68). His photographs — of the first site overgrown and the second devastated by bushfire — are set beside reproductions of the originals.
The accompanying label claims that the two painters unwittingly recorded landscapes managed by traditional Aboriginal burning, the cessation of which has brought them to their present state. This may be true, although neither site corresponds to the grassy plains that were particularly noticed by early colonists — some of whom did realise that the Aborigines regularly burned the land — and Von Guerard’s view does not show any obvious signs of fire; there are, however, burnt stumps on the left of Glover’s view and epicormic growth — leaves growing straight from the trunk — on one large tree on the right in particular.
Of course not all fires were either deliberately lit or managed, so it is hard to be sure what happened in this case. The most catastrophic early wild fires recorded and documented in Australia were the Black Thursday Bushfires in Victoria in 1851, the culmination of a terrible drought in the previous year. The fires were witnessed by William Strutt, who made sketches at the time and completed his dramatic painting of the subject after his return to England in 1864. The exhibition contains a reproduction of this painting and one of its studies.
Art Guide Australia by Barney Smith
“Although WONDER + DREAD features a stunning array of art in a Western tradition that seeks to capture and make sense of the spectacular brutality of the Australian climate, Robson is keen to emphasise that the spirit of ancient knowledge hovers decisively over her show too, and that certain things may be revelatory for visitors.” - Barney Smith for Art Guide Australia.
Curator Danielle Robson replies to Barnaby Smith “A key theme that emerged [in WONDER + DREAD] is the tension between the colonial perspective of the Australian landscape as harsh, inhospitable and uninhabitable, and the approach to landscape of First Nations people, who practised traditional land management and thrived for tens of thousands of years,” says Robson.
Full article here
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Exhibition Details
WONDER + DREAD: Art in the Land of Weather Extremes
Shoalhaven Regional Gallery
12 December – 30 January
Wildfires. Cyclones. Floods. Droughts. Australia is no stranger to extreme weather. These calamitous events, wreaking human and environmental devastation, are central to our shared history and mythology. Those of particular ferocity acquire names that carry through the ages - the Federation Drought, Cyclone Tracey, Black Saturday. And yet, the colossal power of extreme weather systems that indiscriminately obliterate everything in their path leaves us in a state of awe.
Against a backdrop of increasingly frequent extreme weather events, WONDER + DREAD: Art in the Land of Weather Extremes is an ambitious group exhibition of Australian artists that draws on collections from across the country as well as commissioned works to create a thoughtful and nuanced survey of how artists have responded to extreme weather across time.
This exhibition is curated by Danielle Robson of Soda Arts.
Featured Artists
Glenn Barkley, Arthur Boyd, Sam Byrne, Max Dupain, Samuel Elyard, Helga Groves, Rosemary Laing, Marcia Macmillan, Aunty Deidre Martin & Nicole Monks, Alan McFetridge, Joseph McGlennon, Lara Merrett, Sidney Nolan, Susan Norrie, Lloyd Rees, Michael Riley, Cameron Robbins Luke Shadbolt, William Strutt and Albert Tucker.
Acknowledgements
Country, Danielle Robson, David Bowman, Bill Gamage &
Eugene von Guérard (1811 - 1901) Junction of the Buchan and Snowy Rivers, Gippsland (1867)
Provided by National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
John Glover, The River Derwent and Hobart Town, c 1851
Reproduction from a digital file courtesy Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery AG5458