Australia. 13 artists were taken to Broken Hill for 2 weeks and asked to make a body of work in response.
Broken Hill may be desert but it's not as arid so there is quite a lot of vegetation. In fact it looks a lot like my friends' farm in Young. The colours are grey green and brown not vivid reds and ochres.
Steve Lopes painted various industrial junk discarded to rust slowly. He included figures in these pictures but they appear quite awkward, some bang right in the centre of a picture, in an unharmonious composition.
My favourite was Bonfire by Euan Macleod. It centred around a bonfire in the desert at twilight or sunrise. The shadows are long and the figures are warming themselves. The fire looked really warm and inviting. I also liked the sun hitting the hills behind.
Guy Warren painted a beauty in Forgotten Singers, Forgotten Songs 2. This is an abstract but the colours are great. The blue and orange zinged.
It was quite a good collection, and even included a ceramic sculptor Merran Esson. Merran's work reflected corrugated iron structures, she even used copper glaze for that green tinge of oxidized copper.
