Reductive Landscape

Situated 1200kms west of Sydney, the Fowlers Gap Arid Zone Research Station sits on Barkinji land. The land is imposing and harsh. However, it is by no means unspoilt land. There is clear evidence of long-term settler damage and interference. In the late 1800s, the area was massively overstocked with sheep causing significant degradation of the land. No doubt, there was geological exploration at some stage in its history to see if there were any mineral deposits worth mining. It’s a good example of the settler mentality that regards land as something from which to extract value.

Since the 1960s, the site has been used for research, continuously prodded, probed, analysed and monitored. This creates a sense of melancholy about the place. The abused land is now observed to see if it will fix itself.

This body of work questions how we look at the land. As artists, we attempt to document our experience of the land, often romanticising what we think it should be. Paints are mixed in an attempt to interpret the view. Digital cameras use artificial intelligence, enhancing the dynamic range and saturating colours to augment reality.

The work is part colour theory, part science experiment and part conceptual. It makes use of software algorithms to simplify and distil colour. In doing so, it draws attention to the oversimplification of our reading of the land.

Fowlers Creek (2021)
Ultra HD video with sound
3 minutes 30 secs

Land Survey (2021)
Ultra HD video with sound
5 minutes

Colour Palette (2021)

Inkjet print, pigment inks on cotton archival photo paper, 16 prints at 400mm x 400mm.

This work makes use of Image Color Summarizer software developed by Martin Krzywinski, Staff Scientist, Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. The software analyses a digital image to average out the colours. These colours are then matched to human readable colour descriptions drawn from a list of 9,284 named colours.