Ground Level
An NGV Touring Exhibition
16 DEC 2011 – 29 JAN 2012
Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery
Stormy Weather charts some contemporary approaches to the landscape through the work of eleven Australian photographers.
Photographers’ interest in the landscape has increased in the last few years. Perhaps as a result of heightened environmental awareness, or an evolution in our engagement with Australian history, practitioners are again turning to the natural world as a site for critical practice and inspiration.
Drawn from the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, the selected photographers in this exhibition have a particular focus that comes from their active relationship to various environments. The artists displayed here reveal history in a landscape; provoke ecological concerns; use the landscape as a site of performance; or reveal the distinctive beauty of a place.
Frequently underpinning these works of quiet intensity and considerable beauty is an undercurrent of disruption and contradiction that suggests all is not as it may first appear.
Photographers include Rosemary Laing; Harry Nankin; David Stephenson; Richard Woldendorp; Nici Cumpston, Anne Ferran and Jill Orr.