dark mofo, cradle mountain hotel & ash keating …€¦ · change our experience, engagement...

DARK MOFO, CRADLE MOUNTAIN HOTEL & ASH KEATING PRESENT

REMOTENATURERESPONSE

Cradle Mountain HotelWilderness Gallery3718 Cradle Mountain RoadCradle Mountain, Tasmania, Australia16 June - 13 September, 2015


Nature! We find ourselves at once surrounded and embraced by her – powerless to leave her, and powerless to fathom her more deeply. Unasked and unforewarned, she draws us into her dancing round, spins on and on with us until we are wearied and her arms can let us drop. She creates ever new shapes for herself; what is there now was never there before, and what was there before never comes again – everything is new and yet forever ancient. George Christof Tobler 1782

For centuries artists, poets and theorists have been enamoured by the natural world. George Christof Tobler, an eighteenth century Swiss theologian and classical scholar, poetically describes the seductive beauty and power of nature, its forever changing face and our incapacity to harness or control it. Throughout history artists have attempted to capture and distil these ethereal qualities. Casper David Friedrich, central to the German Romantic

painting movement, created images of sublime beauty, where man was almost always depicted in a state of insignificance in the face of nature. Frederic Edwin Church’s 1857 panoramic painting Niagara Falls depicts the raw power of nature; the cavernous basin capturing the ever flowing run of water bathed in a golden light as if the very imprint of a higher power is visible. Eugene von Guerard’s stunning North-east view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko is a study of awe. A figure perched on a cliff in the foreground, casts his eyes across a vast and endless landscape; a realization of his diminutive place in the order of the natural world and a reminder of the wonder of the landscape in a newly settled and yet undiscovered country.

Ash Keating’s new panoramic body of work sits firmly within this pantheon of landscape painting. Like von Guerard before him, Keating has responded to the sheer beauty and mesmerising power of an untamed, pristine and wild landscape: Cradle Mountain and it’s

surrounds in Tasmania’s north-west. However, unlike von Guerard and others who painted the landscape as a vista which we viewed, Keating’s works are paintings which we experience. Created as one work, the eight abstract paintings gradually change from a silvery white to a deep dense black: each a new experience of the subject. While they are not one expansive image nor meant to be experienced as a linear narrative, they do reflect on the change of light and weather and the morphing of the landscape within this context. They place the viewer within the work and ethereally combine both the terrestrial formations of the landscapes and the atmospheric conditions which change our experience, engagement and perception of it. Walking from one painting to the other, spending time with each, enables us to draw on our own memories and varied experiences of wild places like Cradle Mountain. These paintings remind us visually, physically and emotionally of nature’s different states – morning and night,


sundrenched and cloudy, windswept and fog-covered.

The power of these paintings lies in their ability to capture the essence of the location without the need to rely on a didactic depiction. However, they are unmistakably Cradle Mountain. The first panel of Remote Nature Response #1, the lightest in the series, reveals through thin layers of paint the rocky outcrop that rises above the surrounding landscape which defines the region. As the first painting in the series it sets the reference point for what we are about to experience; the thin lines of paint which oscillate between cascading and rising are the one constant reminder that the two peaks of the mountain are forever present. What follows is a journey through the dynamism of the natural world and how everything from light to wind to cloud formations changes that which seems ancient and static. In a number of paintings Keating captures the storming clouds which often wrap around the mountain-top. Reminiscent of J.M.W. Turner’s

greatest atmospheric paintings they reveal a deep sense of space and are a triumph in distilling the complexity of atmospheric experiences. The darker paintings reveal the change of mood one experiences as the sun falls and the moon rises in locations which are removed from the light filled city and urban areas where most of us reside. The fifth panel shimmers with a blue silvery light which parallels the effect of moonlight reflecting off the mountain side and through scattered clouds in the early evening. The last three paintings, studies in a deepening black, reveal the majesty and permanency of Cradle Mountain. In almost absolute darkness one continues to feel its presence. Standing in front of these works we experience a cavernous black space where we are at once encouraged to walk through and explore but also repelled by the density of the unknown. In this context, Keating’s Remote Nature Response series is one of the best examples of the gothic which has been central to the creative depiction of the Australian landscape in painting,

literature and cinema over the last century.

This series of paintings is an extension of Keating’s last body of work, Gravity System Response, which was also a meditation on the Australian landscape. In both Keating’s focus has been firmly on creating an experience of place – an experience that is reliant on people’s own memories and histories and on the power of colour and atmosphere. Remote Nature Response extends on this. As a body of work that responds to a particular location it has the added capacity to encourage us to view and engage with the subject it depicts in new ways. The way we look at Cradle Mountain will be forever altered after viewing Keating’s paintings. It will continue to remain majestic and awe-inspiring, however, we will more closely notice every nuance of its features, its changing moods and its place in the landscape. We will, because of Remote Nature Response, move beyond seeing to a state of experiencing.

Dr Vincent Alessi

Remote Nature Response #1 (detail)synthetic polymer on linen1st panel, 201 x 300 cm

Remote Nature Response #1 (detail)synthetic polymer on linen2nd panel, 201 x 300 cm

Remote Nature Response #1 (detail)synthetic polymer on linen3rd panel, 201 x 300 cm

Remote Nature Response #1 (detail)synthetic polymer on linen4th panel, 201 x 300 cm

This project has been assisted by Blackartprojects

blackartprojectsABN 19 223 523 412blackartprojects.com+61 (0) 421 990 481

dark mofo, cradle mountain hotel & ash keating …€¦ · change our experience, engagement...

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