'Vantage Point' - Joint solos - Rose Moxham (QLD) and Catherine Parker (QLD)

'Vantage Point' - Joint solos by Queensland based artists Rose Moxham and Catherine Parker exploring their unique points of view of the unifying thread of landscape.

Rose Moxham's work is based in nature, specifically the mangrove, living where she does on Moreton Bay, Queensland with the mudflat at her door. It is an immeasurable subject, her only subject, and there are myriad ways of seeing and approaching it. Moxham has chosen to not settle on any one approach (although the one informs the other), partly because it would be untrue to both the mangrove and to how she works, and also because it gives her scope to investigate in many forms not only the physicality and emotional content of the subject, but also that of the materials she uses.

The work is abstracted, reductive, the focus is on rhythm, volume diverted by colour, surface shape, and the tension between raw, sometimes rough, materials, layering, glazes and limited palette.

These new works for Vantage Point take a walk through the mangrove in Wynnum, Queensland. Moxham writes 'From my vantage point nothing is fixed and mud reigns, it shows the way till the tide comes in. Among the trees are rotting vessels, cray pots, debris you don’t want to know about, and the wonderful stink of dying and forming life. Always on the periphery are the grasses that hide the creatures that live in them, then beyond the grasses is the lagoon, a feeding ground for migratory birds. Under there is a mystery.' 

Catherine Parker is a Queensland based artist who resides on the Great Dividing Range in Toowoomba. She celebrates the beauty in both the urban and natural world, choosing to honour, rather than divide the two. Although her landscapes are essentially Australian they could also be universal.

The swimming pool, synonymous with Australian scorching summers, is also a symbol of the great Australian urban dream – a kind of fulfilment of all the boxes ticked when choosing or building a house or selecting a dream holiday destination. The pool or the beach, a national obsession, offers respite and a sense of nostalgia, a place where memories are made and stored. The retro architecture of public swimming pools in regional centres and 60’s/70’s hotel pools brings to mind a time when life was simpler, less fraught.

A solitary chair, a lone vehicle or other inanimate objects often frequent her ‘landscapes’ -  a symbol of both freedom, reflection and the passing of time. When viewed quietly their egalitarian nature becomes something to behold.

Although the works are small and intimate they can also at times, convey a great expansiveness.

She takes heart that within any landscape there are always mysterious elements, a sense of being watched, an invisible presence perhaps that restores the balance.