Road Train (After Lambert)
Jack Randell, is a regional artist well known to Western Plains Cultural Centre. He lives and works in central west New South Wales with his home base being Geurie.
After a twenty-five year career in business, Jack now devotes most of his time to artistic studio practice and teaching.
The primary influence for Jack is the color and light of the regional landscape. The use of new media is his secondary interest. But this interest in the new does not mean he is unmindful of the past:
“Landscape as a genre occupies a privileged space in the Australian psyche: everybody seems entitled to an opinion on representations of landscape.
In Australia it is a truly egalitarian cultural form, whether of the ‘romantic’ or the ‘modern’ style. I am intrigued by the on-going dialogue between our view of the landscape as ‘pastoral romantic’ and ‘modern formalist’ and how that dialogue might inform other diachronic issues such as nature/ industry and Aboriginal/ settler histories”.
Road Train (after Lambert) is a hybrid artwork which refers to one of Australia’s best-known bush images – Across the black soil plains. The original artwork was painted in 1899 by George Lambert - one of Australia’s most influential artists. This exquisite work, on loan from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was on display for three months here at the Western Plains Cultural Centre when it opened to the public in 2006.
The original painting was inspired by Lambert’s memories of horse drawn teams hauling heavily laden wool wagons across the bare, flat lands of Snakes Plain from Warren to the railway station at Nevertire.
Identified as an outstanding depiction of the Western Plains’ landscape, the rhythmic rise and fall of the horses’ heads and the tilt of the wagon, Lambert’s image is known for its particular sense of movement and atmosphere.
Following the original composition, Jack Randell’s Road Train (after Lambert) depicts a modern-day wagon in an identical looking landscape. This image of the road train painted on a large canvas is then overlaid with a video projection onto the canvas.
In contrast to the original painting, there is a different sense of movement. In the darkness of the projection room the mixture of paint and digital video creates scenery of a different kind; the truck loaded with wool appears alternately as a symbol and then an historical account. This stationary picture becomes ‘active’ when an enigmatic sense of time becomes visible with the almost ghost-like appearance of the trucker checking his load and the accompanying bush soundscape.
Jack Randell has deployed time as a digital and metaphoric proposition which reflects the history of wealth and power in contemporary regional industry.
Road Train (after Lambert) is on display in WPCC Video Space from 7 February to 22 March 2009. In addition to the advertised event program, you will have the opportunity to meet the Artist on Saturday 7 March at 2 pm and find out how the work came together.
This post first appeared in the Daily Liberal on Saturday, 7 February.
After a twenty-five year career in business, Jack now devotes most of his time to artistic studio practice and teaching.
The primary influence for Jack is the color and light of the regional landscape. The use of new media is his secondary interest. But this interest in the new does not mean he is unmindful of the past:
“Landscape as a genre occupies a privileged space in the Australian psyche: everybody seems entitled to an opinion on representations of landscape.
In Australia it is a truly egalitarian cultural form, whether of the ‘romantic’ or the ‘modern’ style. I am intrigued by the on-going dialogue between our view of the landscape as ‘pastoral romantic’ and ‘modern formalist’ and how that dialogue might inform other diachronic issues such as nature/ industry and Aboriginal/ settler histories”.
Road Train (after Lambert) is a hybrid artwork which refers to one of Australia’s best-known bush images – Across the black soil plains. The original artwork was painted in 1899 by George Lambert - one of Australia’s most influential artists. This exquisite work, on loan from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was on display for three months here at the Western Plains Cultural Centre when it opened to the public in 2006.
The original painting was inspired by Lambert’s memories of horse drawn teams hauling heavily laden wool wagons across the bare, flat lands of Snakes Plain from Warren to the railway station at Nevertire.
Identified as an outstanding depiction of the Western Plains’ landscape, the rhythmic rise and fall of the horses’ heads and the tilt of the wagon, Lambert’s image is known for its particular sense of movement and atmosphere.
Following the original composition, Jack Randell’s Road Train (after Lambert) depicts a modern-day wagon in an identical looking landscape. This image of the road train painted on a large canvas is then overlaid with a video projection onto the canvas.
In contrast to the original painting, there is a different sense of movement. In the darkness of the projection room the mixture of paint and digital video creates scenery of a different kind; the truck loaded with wool appears alternately as a symbol and then an historical account. This stationary picture becomes ‘active’ when an enigmatic sense of time becomes visible with the almost ghost-like appearance of the trucker checking his load and the accompanying bush soundscape.
Jack Randell has deployed time as a digital and metaphoric proposition which reflects the history of wealth and power in contemporary regional industry.
Road Train (after Lambert) is on display in WPCC Video Space from 7 February to 22 March 2009. In addition to the advertised event program, you will have the opportunity to meet the Artist on Saturday 7 March at 2 pm and find out how the work came together.
This post first appeared in the Daily Liberal on Saturday, 7 February.
posted by WORD OF MOUTH: WPCC BLOG @ 14:46
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