By Jonathan Howcroft
Australia is massive. So huge that scale is rendered almost meaningless. Take The Kimberley in northern WA. Three times the size of England, twice the size of Victoria but with a population of just 40,000 – less than half the capacity of the MCG. Environments like this are difficult to comprehend in their entirety by bipeds standing less than two metres tall. It is only from the air that the enormity, beauty and rhythm of such vast terrains can be fully appreciated.
Kim Lawler’s aerial photography captures the absurdity of scale of The Kimberley. Her images also document the markings, both natural and constructed, that betray the landscape’s activities. Great scars of manually shifted red earth and laser-beam roads are emphasised by Lawler’s lens like a tattooist’s needle while the ancient Bungle Bungles quiver and shimmer like a Munch scream. The colours are provided courtesy of one of nature’s most dramatic palettes. Vibrant Yampi Sound scarlet burns alongside the ethereal grey green forms of the Bungles and the swirls of blue, ochre and indeed sand from the controversially named Great Sandy Desert.
Lawler’s exhibition is structured to allow viewers to explore the relationship The Kimberley has with its inhabitants and their physical legacy. Stunningly beautiful, the photographs disclose to the trained eye stories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants, transitory visitors and the impact of resource development. The experience isn’t simply Google Maps in a white room. Quite deliberately there is little or no indication of what landmarks have been captured in shot to allow colour and shape to transcend geographical comprehension.
On close inspection some of the images suffer from slight colour flaws, a bi-product of the digital processing, but these are undetectable at the distances viewers are required to appreciate the images in their entirety.
The exhibition extends Kim Lawler’s artistic relationship with the region which has previously included studies of the remote Buccaneer Archipelago; Cockatoo Island iron ore mine and the Warmun Aboriginal Community on the periphery of the Great Sandy Desert.
Only open for a short time, Between Lines will make every viewer rush to plan a trip to the North West and make you fight for a window seat on the way there.
Kim Lawler’s Between Lines is on until 10 October 2009 at fortyfivedownstairs: 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. Tue to Fri: 11am – 5pm, Sat: 12pm – 4pm. Admission free.
Images thanks to Kim Lawler.
