A landscape is a series of named locales, a set of relational places linked by paths, movements and narratives. (Tilley '94 conclusion)
It's a long way from rural New South Wales to rural n/e France or more precisely the other way around but with the right light and a morning mist and possibly the squinting of eyes, a paddock with a haystack here could be there or there here. Though of course it would only be a trick of the mind and the light, the paddocks and the haystacks carry their own stories which would refuse to engage in such deception but they may be captured in their own elements, engaged in that moment of mist filled eye-squint, to mingle and enmesh with the viewers stories/ memories/ passages and possibly here or there or both be dabbed upon a canvas. Stolen from its place of Being, a haystack out of context with its reason. Later to travel the world, a representative of it's time, locale, people. (…)
A journey along a path can be claimed to be a paradigmatic cultural act, since it is following in the steps inscribed by others whose steps have worn a conduit for movement which becomes the correct or 'best way to
It's the Artist we've come to admire when these images of captured culture are presented for our perusal.
A question of framing. What is in view and not, what comes into view and leaves. Objects/thoughts depart, move through the field of vision/thinking to make way for others. Again I am driving the freeway to Canberra. I'm going to the National Gallery to see 'Monet & Japan' an exhibition looking at the influence Japanese art had on the great Impressionists work. I have driven this road many times over, a journey of repetition and change. The years and I have seen changes to the landscape that rushes headlong towards my windscreen or slides past my window. (?). Does the view come to me or I to it or both? (…) Perception delivers all three. The further I get from the urban/e sprawl space opens and closes. The wider, longer, further the view the cosier my auto cocoon becomes. Inside becomes more inside with the advent of an increasing outside. My crumple zones gain strength from not having as much to potentially crumple with. The general comes toward while the specific is moved to, evoking a mood or whispering a history or prod
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