Hadley Art Prize

Abstract

The painting 'Colonial Heat: Warming Time' interrogates early Australian settler discovery narratives using specific techniques and methods. The surface evokes relationships with traditional landscape painting methods (following Repton, Von Guerard and Friedrich) but compositional elegance and refinement are interrupted by fluorescent washes and toxic, exaggerated sunsets which reference contemporary environmental themes. Postmodern disjuncture in the form of lurid palettes and an 'unsettling' dispersed compositional strategy are deployed to unsettle the triumphalist detail of conventional landscape. Thus, the shore boat filled colonial voyagers plumbing the depths of an unexplored Tasman l..