This is my latest purchase from a recent exhibition called “SURFACE” by Bart Oswald. This photographic print is titled Open Cut #1 (2011)

Bart Oswald

Open Cut #1 (2011)

49 x 73cm

pigment print on cotton rag

SURFACE is a body of photographic and digital video works by Bart Oswald, which was exhibited at DedSpace Gallery Rozelle from the 15^th to the 19^th of August 2011.  Bart is currently an Honours student at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. Over seven days during June 2011, Bart photographed and video taped the landscape of the Kapunda copper mine, located on the edge of the Barossa Valley in South Australia, the birthplace of Australia’s commercial mining industry. This body of work exposes the visible and invisible traces, the indelible scarring and residues inscribed in the landscape by colonial settlement and the mining industry. Bart’s ongoing interest in what has happened to the Australian landscape since colonial settlement has led to a series of photographic works that draws out the beauty whilst it hints at the traces of dispossession, disappointment, and lost hopes that the landscape retains today. The mine is an iconic, yet understated, reminder of our colonial past, with its misplaced optimism and good intentions.

From Bart’s series SURFACE the photographic image Open Cut #1(2011) gives the view of a unique, harsh and striking landscape. What we see looks like a badlands, a terrain where soft dedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded by wind and water, but the reality that this is an old copper mine leaves an uneasy sensation. Today Kapunda is specifically unique as a mine because of it’s small size, in contrast to the extremely large mine sites that are now spread across Australia, and also due to how the mine is shaped as an open cut mine. In Open Cut #1 we are able to see the mine has gradual smooth slopes and contours with the soil covered in patches of many different shades of blue and green (due to the oxidization of the copper in the soil and rock) and though it may seem natural once we look closer we are reminded of a time before heavy and large fuel consuming machinery, which nowadays cuts deep steps into the land creating gigantic holes in the earth’s surface, to a time when horse and cart moved earth and men used picks and shovels to shape the landscape.

A pen portrait by friend and artist Simon Fieldhouse. Visit Simon’s website to see more of his work.

I am happy to have added this piece by Mishka Borowski titled “There are two colours in my head” to my collection. Thanks to Gallery 9.

This is my latest purchase from a recent exhibition of Tom Carment’s work at the Damien Minton Gallery. It is entitled “Mother and Child, Bosom Beach Currarong” in watercolour & gouache. To see more work by Tom Carment visit his website.