UNTETHERING LANDSCAPE: REVOLUTIONARY?

Cosmic Dust Oil on linen 120 x 160 cm

This year's, entry by invitation, Tattersall's Club Landscape $25,000 Art award opened last week at Brisbane's Tattersall's Club. The winner is well known Queensland artist Ian Smith. I have known Ian for many, many years and it's exciting to see someone you know win such a great award. Of course I would have liked to have won! But, I have been in this game [ie: art world] for a long time, and I count my blessings for having been invited to exhibit in such a strong exhibition.

You can see all the paintings in the award exhibiton online HERE 

If you live in, or close to, Brisbane you can see the paintings at their public exhibition, from Monday 10 September until Friday 21 September 7am- 6 pm at Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St in Brisbane's CBD.

My entry Cosmic Dust is above. On the opening night, and at a 'meet and greet the artists' jazz night on Friday, I chatted to many people about Cosmic Dust. I always love a chance to chat!

Please click HERE to read the post I wrote just after I finished Cosmic Dust

Accompanying each painting in the Tattersall's exhibition is an artist's statement. This is mine below:

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Cosmic Dust simultaneously suggests the multiple perspectives and horizons, in the close and far distances, existing between the nano and vast. This painting, seemingly a landscape of Earth in Space, untethers landscape from Earth-bound perspectives...suggesting that maybe a sub-atomic particle or even a whole Universe can provide new perspectives of and for landscape.

In our globalised world, in which we live locally, new perspectives [seen simultaneously?] may hold clues to how to sustain life on Earth, for indeed humankind has no other landscape/place to call ‘home’.

The circle of two trees, created with my much loved age-old transcultural/religious tree-of-life symbol, represents life as it viscerally branches out and roots itself into the landscape of all existence. The trees are encircled by white light, representing everything from Earth's atmosphere, to reflected sunlight, to divine light …even the flash of light at the Big Bang…an afterglow? 

The title Cosmic Dust suggests that subatomic, atomic, human, planetary and universal entities are the dust created by the Big Bang. Thus, the painting can be seen variously as many landscapes; perhaps Earth or the Universe in Space, maybe a drop of water or perhaps a spec of dust floating across a dusky country Queensland sky?

UNTETHERING LANDSCAPE: REVOLUTIONARY?

In my chats with people, at the Tattersall's exhibition, the idea of untethering landscape from Earth-bound perspectives seemed to strike a chord. Why? I suspect it holds the possibility of discovery and the potential for new ways of doing things....and I don't mean only new ways of painting...but rather that taking different perspectives may just reveal answers to questions of sustainability [across the ambit of human pursuits] and maybe...just maybe....provoke better questions that then unfold into new discoveries.

It seemed almost revolutionary, at a landscape exhibition, to suggest untethering landscape from Earth! But, if everything in the universe, from the quantum to the cosmic [with humans placed somwhere in the matrix], is the 'dust' created by the Big Bang, then 'landscape' lives within us...we are the landscape.

Please read my post TO GROK LANDSCAPE  for more on the idea that we are not separate from the landscape...and I don't mean just the Earth-bound one!

UPDATE

In my last post I mentioned I had been to the Nindooinbah Woolshed exhibition opening..opened by well known Brisbane Art Dealer, Bruce Heiser.

Here are a couple of photos from the evening:

Above: Here's me with my very talented artist [printmaker] friend Wayne Singleton. You can see one of his artworks on the right. It is a handcoloured relief block print. My painting Sap of Life is behind us.

Please check out Wayne's WEBSITE  to see more of his wonderful work.

Above: Here's me again with one of the fantastic curators of the Nindooinbah exhibition, Susan Short. My paintings Halo [on left] and Finding The Light [on right] are behind us.

Above: And, here is a photo of the Nindooinbah woolshed...an example of a quintessentially Australian building.


Until next time!
Cheers,
Kathryn
www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com