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September 13, 2010
Wilderness, an exhibition at the New South Wales Art Gallery in March-May 2010 considers how nature and landscape continue to preoccupy contemporary painters. This is the first in a new series of biennial exhibitions supported by the Balnaves Foundation. These are called ‘Balnaves Contemporary’ and consist of three exhibitions in the series, which are planned for 2010, 2012 and 2014. The first considers painting, the second, photography and the third, contemporary sculpture and installation.
The title of the exhibition is misleading as it suggests the concept of ‘wilderness’, of a land and nature unspoilt by humankind. This contrasts urban life and cultivated nature from ‘untouched’ areas a landscape untouched by humans in which the pristine is held to be more valuable than land marked, shaped and cultivated by humans.
Wilderness is not about observed landscape, but about imagined regions, psychological landscapes, creatures both natural and unnatural, the importance that ideas of the 'wild' still play in our minds and lives, and how we inscribe nature with memory and meaning. Unfortunately there are no images online from the exhibition.
On the of the painters in the exhibition was Andrew Browne, whose paintings are based on his continuing observation of the natural world through photography to make strange the familiar.
Andrew Browne From the Periphery #09, 2010, B&W photographs, on Harman Pro, Inkjet Warmtone
It is a very straightforward image that is then used as raw material to construct this:
Andrew Browne, Periphery #11 (apparition) 2010, Oil on Linen
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