The Mallee

The post’s title new beginnings refers to me starting   to scope work for  the 2018 section of the Mallee Routes project whilst I was  at Swan Hill for the exhibition at the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery.    This … Read More

Exhibiting  Mallee Routes  at the  wonderful Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery in Victoria  opened on Friday the 23rd March, was a great experience.   The exhibition  was the result of a years work photographing the  South Australian and Victorian Mallee by … Read More

The second exhibition of the Mallee Routes project is coming up. It will be at the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery from 23rd of  March to the 6th of May 2018. The exhibition   represents new work, namely work  that … Read More

The history of water in the 20th century was  one of piping water to the storage dams located across the region via the earthen, gravity-fed Wimmera Mallee Domestic and Stock Channel System. This  system extended from the Grampians in central western Victoria to Ouyen and Manangatang in the north, Underbool in the west and Korong Vale in the east.… Read More

I leave  Encounter Bay tomorrow for a 5 day photocamp at Morgan in South Australia with Gilbert, even though  it is a little late in the year  to be photographing in the SA Mallee.  I haven’t been able to get away … Read More

Can trauma be connected to a topographic approach to  photographing the Mallee? I have been mulling over this whilst  I put the  Mallee Routes  project aside for a month or so,  so that  I could  work on the Adelaide Photography … Read More

This scoping photo of silos at Birchip in the Wimmera Mallee is a deadpan image of an unexpressive and repetitive subject  that appears impersonal, blank and boring. It repeats the same idea–silos in the landscape— in different ways.  It avoids the artistic subjectivity and narrativity represented by photojournalism.  There is no event in the picture and there is little human interest. … Read More

In late July Gilbert Roe and myself  had a 5 day camp at Lake Lascelles in Hopetoun,  which is in the northern western part of the Wimmera Mallee in Victoria  . It was a winter camp and it was very cold … Read More

I had planned  to go on a roadtrip to the Mallee this week on my own, but an infected tooth has seen that trip cancelled. Instead I am reading Don Watson’s   book The Bush: Travels in the Heart of Australia (2016). From … Read More

Photographing the rural landscapes of  the Mallee  country  needs to be distinguished from the idyllic  pastoral tradition in Australian visual culture  that in the Heidelberg tradition   emphasised the tamed farmland with its  abundance of natural resources.  The  artists represent this  in … Read More