In this exhibition five photo-media artists look at the Australian landscape with imagery that spans the abstract and somewhat esoteric to epic photographs of Lake Eyre’s seemingly endless horizon and the sprawling metropolis of the country’s second largest city, Melbourne.
Murray Fredericks, Magdalena Bors, David Stephenson, Jesse Marlow and Mark Kimber all clearly have very different experiences of the landscape and their approach to photography. The resultant exhibition is an eclectic mix of imagery using colours and symbolism.
Magdalena Bors’ images focus on the domestic and she has constructed “imaginary landscapes” within her own home to convey her vision, while Mark Kimber has created miniature dioramas to “investigate the state between wakefulness and sleep”. Jesse Marlow is a street photographer whose work explores “the banality of modern day existence” through the rituals of suburbia, and David Stephenson depicts the electric frenzy that is the modern city, a celebration of technology juxtaposed to the potential for environmental disaster.
And then there is the work of Murray Fredericks, which in my opinion stands out in this collection. Fredericks’ photographs are taken from his award-winning body of work SALT and capture the vast expanses of one of the most isolated and desolate of landscapes, Lake Eyre in South Australia.
Lake Eyre, which often lays dry, covers one sixth of the continent and when full ranks in the top 20 of the largest lakes in the world. Fredericks’ solitary pilgrimages to this remote location over a number of years has resulted in an extraordinary collection of images, many of which look as if they were shot from outer space, so surreal is the landscape.
Often it is said that that still photographs makes the viewer slow down, stop and think. Fredericks’ SALT draws the viewer in to another world where it is easy to imagine how unnerving the quiet earth can be.
Alison Stieven-Taylor
Geomorphometries: Contemporary Terrains
Until 25 November, 2012
Queensland Centre for Photography
Cnr. Cordelia & Russell Sts
South Brisbane
Australia
