𝘿𝙪𝙨𝙩

Image: Murray Kirkland, The Ancient Mariner, 2022. Oil and mixed media, 110 x 110 x 5 cm. Image courtesy of Fiona Little

Murray Kirkland

Gallery 2

Friday 11 November - Sunday 27 November 2022

Travelling through the vast open spaces of the Outback and Central Australia, the traveller is confronted with ancient landscapes, an overwhelming sense of space and time. The evolution of the landscape is evident through the sparse vegetation, revealing geological formations resulting from the action of continent shaping forces. Fossil remains speak of primordial seas; here there are signs of the earliest lifeforms on Earth. In this arid landscape meteorite craters are clearly seen, and at night The Milky Way reminds us of even greater forces, of even greater stretches of time, of wider cycles of destruction, creation, continuance.

Immersed in this seemingly limitless stream of time, the traveller undertakes a journey that becomes more than physically crossing a landscape; it becomes more esoteric, the journey takes on aspects of a rite of passage, a pilgrimage. The length of a human life is a speck, a mote of dust in an ocean of time.