This exhibition presents an intersection of three artists using divergent landscapes to bring an awareness of the place in which we live. Through the singularity of their work and commitment to location, each artist conveys an almost mission-like intensity to the things that we may have missed, overlooked or have found too real to see.
Through life experience, each artist is fully present in the work itself, and yet, quite remarkably, there is an objective distance in their approach. The reverence for their subject is reinforced by the use of symmetry, order and control rather than flashy angles or hyper-image manipulations. A studied eye that is both clear and present.
The Natural Landscapes of Matthew Stanton present the fragile remains of the pre-urban. The close-cropped images pull one directly into dense layered life, where time is vast and evolutionary intelligence is prioritised. His accompanying texts inform us of what we may have missed. We become aware of the processes that formed these places, and the traces of human intervention such as reclaimed land, invasive species or traditional burning practices that have modified this primeval logic.
The Urban Landscape of Kim Guthrie is one fully customised by people, in streets, homes, shops, trucks or bodies. They have been transformed and littered with logos, T-shirts advertising and architecture. With identity uncannily expressed with these tools. Kim presents us with a particular strain of urbanism, in a particular part of the world, at this very particular moment in time. He doses these images with an affection for the people and place, in all its overlooked and awkward dignity.
The Desert Landscape within Paula Mahoney’s photographs has been desecrated by human action, and this ghosts her isolated figures. The ongoing horizon, harsh light and vast sky strips back the modern world. Endlessly pointing to the removal of living relationships because personhood and mourning are private and solitary. This inversion of life has transmogrified those within the frame to backwards, with faces covered, positions inverted and gravity defied, because death is present, and all things will pass …..except emptiness.