2018 Finalists

Artist statement: This work aims to integrate ‘landscape’ and ‘still life’. These Devonian rocks, some 350-million-years old, formed from the coral reefs that covered north-western Australia. They tell a story of our planet’s geological and biological evolution.

In Chinese and Japanese cultures, Gongshi and Suiseki rocks, widely appreciated for their evocative forms, are at once object and metaphor. Japanese stone gardens are sites for meditation. With a respectful nod to these traditions, I present these rocks within the western still-life tradition.

Over time, studying rocks takes one into caves, onto mountains and out into the Universe. The separation of human from ‘other’ dissolves; no longer a distant place but intimately connected – flesh and stone, human landscape, one and the same.

www.mariandrew.com.au