Old farmhouses, shadowy interiors, forgotten objects, evocative ruins – to move from the city to this country’s inland is to be in a powerful and ancient sleeping landscape, strewn with the traces of European settlement. Huge skies loom, and time disappears. The Goyder Street artists have gone en plein air and taken their easels and paints to the mid north and beyond to capture both the beauty and comfort of country but also the sense of dreams built and broken.
Goyder street collective – the artists
GAYE BRIMACOMBE Gaye Brimacombe is a still life painter working in oils. Her art invites slow, quiet contemplation and she intends her paintings to provide a sense of calm – a direct contrast to the often fleeting and noisy nature of digital ‘looking’. In this collection she brings together objects of individual beauty – antique and modern, bought and borrowed, found or inherited, made in nature or through human creativity, familiar and utilitarian, or mysterious and obsolete. She merges their histories in a new ‘suspended time’ on the canvas.
MIGNON CLIFT Mignon Clift is a full-time Adelaide artist who works in a wide variety of mediums and with all kinds of materials to create colourful and expressive artworks. Paintings, prints or mosaic pieces all reflect her passion for the environment, showcasing beautiful native flora, and rural and coastal themes. Many include recycled or repurposed materials in surprising ways. Mignon has been inspired by the imaginings and memories of old homesteads and rural life, using vintage materials, old wallpapers and rustic timbers to create the works in this exhibition.
DYMPIE JAMES When printmaker and painter Dymphna James visited the mid-north she found herself in awe of the tall wind turbines dominating the landscape. In this exhibition she has been inspired to capture themes of past and present, observing a beautiful landscape affected by drought, the crumbling deserted ruins from the past and the impact of the turbines on the current landscape.
ANNIE HASTWELL Annie Hastwell has a particular interest in how simple things can tell bigger stories and how ‘mood’ is evoked by colour, illumination, and the interaction of figures within a scene. In exploring beyond the Goyder Line for this exhibition she was captivated by the grandeur and timelessness of the landscape, a place where past and present seem to exist together. Warm desert nights by candlelight, a simple vase of wildflowers in a farmhouse window, the loneliness of a small cottage in a vast landscape – all evoke the ghosts of the past in this unique part of Australia.
ALISON LAYCOCK Alison Laycock uses a range of materials to represent the topography of rugged landscapes and the dynamic beauty of wide-open skies. Her work brings maps, natural ochres and found objects together with traditional media to capture the stories embodied in the terrain and buildings of Ikara-Flinders Ranges and the Mid North. Iconic symbols of the region – farm sheds, water tanks, humble homes and grand buildings – are playfully presented as dioramas. The ancient landforms and cloud formations in her work evoke a sense of the power of nature. E
DWINA SHANNON Drawing on memories of growing up on a mid-north farm, Edwina Shannon explores found objects, flora, garden produce and sun-drenched landscapes of this land. She uses varied media of painting, printmaking and collage in her work, playing with texture and the placement of materials, colour and light to create compositions that test the viewer’s perception of time and place.