DEPTH OF PLACE
This exhibition draws upon what our world has lost and forgotten - opening up conversations surrounding our most ancient and rare landscapes and the emotional impact of their presence in the context of today’s rapidly changing world. With concerns surrounding humanities growing disconnection from our natural world and the growing vulnerability of wilderness landscapes, I aim to evoke a sense of unity and peaceful harmony, reuniting our relationships with nature by focusing on the sublime and humbling landscapes of Bathurst Harbour and Port Davey in Tasmania’s remote Southwest.
I’ve been returning to this region, studying the light, changing weather conditions and observing the unique geological and ecological presence that pulses throughout this time-weathered land for over eight years. Each return births a series of new paintings, deepening my love, appreciation, and emotional connection to this place. Through this ongoing relationship, I focus on the silent atmospheric beauty that hangs in the air - the same transcendental awe that has helped me through a time of loss, enriching my spiritual growth and informing my art practice for the past two decades. It is here, in these quiet moments, where I’ve found myself deepening my senses to the volume of air before me -surging an awareness no longer of oneself but a consciousness that extends well beyond.
Through this connection, I hope to create an informed representation that evokes a sense of place - honouring this land’s past and the deepening vulnerability of the wilderness landscape as we grapple with the realities of climate change on our most precious environments. With sentiments surrounding our intrinsic connection with nature and the importance of strengthening this relationship, I reflect on this land’s ancestral heritage and acknowledge the traditional owners of this country, the Needwonnee and Ninene Peoples and their deep reciprocal relationship with the Land, Sea, Waterways, Sky and Culture.
As this landscape confronts a new dawn in its long history, I examine the intensity of emotions that have surfaced collectively during the recent epochal events surrounding global warming and the lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic. As the flaws of high-density urban living and our growing segregation from green living spaces revealed our collective elemental response to seek nature and slow our rhythms in its presence. As a result, our national parks, beaches, and bush trails became a refuge from their urban confines - exposing our primal need to escape and immerse ourselves within its natural beauty. A sense of realisation filtered through the chaos and mayhem, and our need to be with nature became the clarity from which we found hope.
Today, more and more studies confirm what many cultures have known for thousands of years, in that we are a part of nature, not separate from it, and immersing in a natural environment provides health benefits to both our physical and mental well-being — proving how imperative it is to rethink how we live our lives, not only for the health of ourselves but for the health of our future generations and our most vulnerable species and ecosystems that inhabit this great Earth.
Through empirical observations, empathy and love for this raw and rare wilderness, I hope to provide a soulful space within these paintings. One that offers a quiet place beyond the foreground and into the depths of the horizon, illuminating lost memories and renewing the inherent threads that bind us to this Earth and together.
Jennifer Riddle, 2023
