Narelle Autio & Trent Parke: To the Sea

Overview

As suggested by the title, To the Sea, this is an exhibition exuding the belief that the journey is more gratifying than the destination. Artists and partners Narelle Autio and Trent Parke travelled 90,000km around Australia over a period of approximately ten years. The result divulges distant horizons, endless unsealed roads and wild, uncultivated scenery.

To the Sea is the by-product of two independently acclaimed series: Parke’s haunting Minutes to Midnight and Autio’s lush Watercolours. It is the quieter underside to their meandering journey, less populated and more intuitive. Weaving together two different perspectives, the exhibition presents a unique meditation on Australia’s stunning desert and semi-desert scenery.

In tapping into the dark undergrowth of the outback, Parke produces heavily contrasted black-and-white images. For example, Headlights in the Bush illuminates a tangle of broken branches in the foreground, while a silhouetted hill fringed with shrubbery looms behind. Similarly, his strikingly large untitled (bones) is taken at night, depicting an explosion of skeletal fragments strewn across scraggy bushland. There is a brooding and mysterious quality to these low-level landscapes, a feeling of impending danger balanced by intrigue.

Parke’s epic 64-page I. The Road Trip is akin to a storyboard, capturing minute detail and momentary quirks. Subtle scenes that would normally be glossed over are magnified. Aa cluster of turtles swim amid a mass of sparkling reflections; their shadows, the clouds, and the reeds are all printed on the tranquil water. Throughout this montage of memories, there are also blank pages, alluding to a narrative that dips in and out of focus.

Autio's attention is also on the country’s sparse interior. Many of her works are reminiscent of travel snapshots taken from a car window. Her creative mastery of this fast-paced style of image-making reveals a striking painterly texture. Like an impressionist painting, there is a horizontal velocity to the deep red of the Simpson Desert. Distant trees appear as short, sharp jabs, whilst trees in the foreground crumble, flicker and duplicate. In depicting landscapes in this way, she infuses the journey with a warmth, energy and imagination that makes it almost tangible, communicating the notion that she is trekking terrain that is both physical and emotional.

Some of her other works can be figured as moments of clarity, such as a detailed image of an orphaned and malnourished joey with storm clouds brewing overhead.

There is a prevalent feeling of intimacy imbued in To the Sea, as you share a glimpse of Autio and Parke's personal travel experiences and flesh out their contrasts and similarities. At the same time, it encapsulates a sense of continental vastness, literally casting light on a sublime and enigmatic Australian outback.