The latest exhibition of New Zealand born Melbourne artist Thornton Walker, Journey, opened this week at Scott Livesey galleries in Armadale.
Walker says the title of the exhibition has various meanings: most obviously, the records of a physical journey he took to Japan early in 2013. Then, by way of contrast, the journey of refugees, made more pertinent by the recent toughening of Australia’s refugee policy; and finally, the journey into new ways of working and ways of seeing in the studio.
The rural landscapes here are from Walker’s recent trip to Japan. Glimpses of everyday scenes, they are sourced from photos taken from bus and train windows or walking in the alpine forests of Kyushu. The over-laid script in the painting Journey: ‘I could not help/feeling vague misgivings/about the future/of my journey’ is taken from Basho’s seventeenth century ‘Records of a travel-worn satchel’, and expresses succinctly, in words from nearly four centuries ago, the apprehension felt when embarking on a journey. Superimposing the text onto the landscape and painting on a textured, raked ground shifts the work away from the purely pictorial, offering more complex layers of seeing and meaning.
The painting Two landscapes, Christmas Island Detention Centre depicts a disturbing view of the infamous detention centre while in contrast, Gary Snyder offers a glimpse of a tranquil moment on a mountain walk, with a haiku by the American poet Gary Snyder titled ‘Hiking in the Totsugawa Gorge’: ‘pissing, watching, a waterfall’.
Similarly the painting, Two landscapes contrasted, Manus Island and Basho is Walker’s response to advertisements warning refugees that ‘YOU WON’T BE SETTLED IN AUSTRALIA’. The Manus Island Detention Centre (a modified Australian insignia floating above it with the kangaroo punching the emu and the words ‘YOU WON’T’ replacing ‘Australia’) sits in contrast to the peaceful scene in Basho’s poem: ‘To talk casually, about an iris flower/ is one of the pleasures, of the wandering journey’.
Thornton Walker: Journey shows at Scott Livesey Galleries, 909A High St, Armadale, until November 16.
Images
1) Thornton Walker – Winter Orchard with Enclosure
2) Thornton Walker – Figures Running in the snow
3) Thornton Walker – Landscape, Okayama
4) Thornton Walker – Journey
