This exhibition fuses three strands in Lindsay Farrell's spiritual and visual journeys through the southern, central and western Queensland landscape, a journey spanning a substantial part of his artistic career. These harsh but savagely beautiful locations, in this case, Camarvon, Girraween, and Barney, exemplify Farrell's vision of the features of the landscape as metaphor to explore the metaphysical, as well as his concern for the environment since much of what remains of Queensland, natural or near-natural landscape is threatened by agricultural and tourist development (Left: Girraween fault - Granite fault (cross) Gouache on arches 100 x 40 cm).

Landscape painting has been a constant feature of Western painting since the sixteenth century with the genre dividing itself into three broad and sometimes overlapping strands: landscape as a visual record of place, landscape as confirmation of property ownership and landscape as metaphor. These three strands largely contained the tradition until the late nineteenth century when Impressionism added the notion of landscape as visual/optical sensation. Thus, these four strands became part of the European cultural baggage brought to Australia by convicts, explorers, settlers and fortune seekers. The strangeness of the new continent created new challenges of nineteenth century artists: how to record with some accuracy the physical features, the flora, fauna and the inhabitants when they did not conform to pre-existing models. The most common view of Terra Australis available to the English-speaking world prior to Captain Cook's voyages would have been a literary one, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Fantasy and satire, though, could hardly serve the purposes of the early colonists, particularly when one of their objectives was to convey a view of the new continent as being sufficiently attractive and benevolent, in European terms, to attract new settlers. As Philip Hutch observed:

The main arenas of action in these early images are filled with recognisable elements, just like home; the unrecognisable original elements are drawn into the margins as exotics and local colour or simply left out. [1]

As the nineteenth century unfolded, the genres of landscape developed in the European tradition found expression among the colonial painters: accurate visual records of the continent as it was explored, then conquered by the settlers went hand-in-hand with the naming of its physical features, signified possession of the land, of control, and of ownership in a material and spiritually exalted sense. The name and the visual record indicated the fulfilment of a European destiny for domination reaching to all parts of the Earth.

Sometimes, this exaltation was expressed in personal and endearing terms, as in Glover's depictions of Van Diemen's Land: common-sense but self-satisfied as in Martens' visual records of his travels; and reaching for the sublime as in Piguentit's and Von Guerard's paintings of misty lakes and lofty peaks. The early Heidelberg painters added a sense of immediacy and informality with their adaptation of European Impressionism, that is, what had once been an alien and forbidding land had been tamed and domesticated. The bush and the beach were no longer elemental and threatening forces. They were home.

Much has been written about the landscape tradition which appeared after the First World War, especially in the landscapes of Arthur Streeton, who become the paragon exponent in the eyes of many of his contemporaries of an Australian national identity firmly attached to the Empire. It took another world war, the fall of the British Empire, relentless urbanisation and, in common with much of the world, consumerism, new technologies and the communication revolution to dislodge landscape painting for its pre-eminent position in Australian art. Some artists, notably Fred Williams, achieved recognition from the landscape. The Wynne Prize continued to be awarded annually, but landscape painting had largely lost its appeal within the official art world dominated by curators, academics and critics.

In the 1980s, however, a major development burst on the contemporary art scene: Aboriginal art from the desert which spoke of ancient ownership, not possession of the land, which gave form to the landscape in symbolic and spiritual terms in a style both ancient and contemporary. Aboriginal art has traversed considerably territory since it early expression in the Papunya-Tula painters, but the essence remains constant. As expressed to me by someone deeply involved in fostering Aboriginal arts, it is always political in that it affirms the sacred connections and, thus, ownership of country.

The existence and pre-eminence of Aboriginal art have proven to be a challenge and an opportunity to other Australian painters. Powerful statements can still be made by non-Aborigines, as witnessed in the paintings of William Robinson who has created a completely personal way of expressing his physical and spiritual vision of south-east Queensland's rain forests and coastline.

Similarly, Lindsay Farrell, over a period of some twenty-five years, has been developing his own vision of the Queensland landscape within a Christian framework. He consistently uses symbols associated with Christianity: the cross, the circle and natural elements, water and fire, in order to create a vision of the landscape, which is both physical and spiritual. Farrell has an intimate knowledge of the areas he paints. He has visited and walked them repeatedly. He has also carefully studied the topography. He understands the vast river system of central and western Queensland, the lakes, the alignment of the valley carved out by the water flow, the complex structures of flood plains, the destructive and regenerative role of fire as a shaper of the landscape, and the mysterious bubbling of water the surface of otherwise barren soil from deep and immemorial aquifers. Finally, he is all too aware of the extreme fragility of this most ancient land put under considerable stress by development since the arrival of European settlers.

As I understand it, Farrell's use of Christian symbolism is not a form of cultural imperialism designed to challenge if not negate the Aboriginal vision. Rather it complements it. Some of the Christian symbols allude to Christ's sacrifice, that is, his physical wounding and death at the hands of his fellow humans. Farrell must recognise in it the Divine presence.

Farell is one of a still relatively small band of contemporary European artists who brings a new sensibility to their depiction of the landscape, which springs from an ecological theology. With Farrell this sensibility expresses itself in specific Christian terms, and for that is all the more courageous in that he wishes to challenge the traditional view of domination over the Earth given to humanity by God in Genesis, not a licence to exploit and plunder but as custodianship, that is, to care for and nurture the Earth and all it bounties. More than ever, artists with the eloquence of Farrell are needed, not because art can change the world (we no longer claim that), but because individual statements when voiced in concert with many others can become a chorus for change.

[1] Hutch, O. (2002). Raymond Arnold's Traversing South Exhibition Catalogue. Melbourne & Sydney: Australian Galleries.

________________________

About the Artist

Lindsay Farrell is Senior Lecturer in visual arts at the Australian Catholic University (McAuley Campus). In 1987 he was awarded the Caroline Barker Travelling Art Scholarship by the City of Brisbane and the Royal Queensland Art Society. He holds a PhD from Griffith University and has research interest in art and spirituality. He maintains his own art practice as a painter, exhibiting widely in Australia and overseas. Recent shows were exhibited at the Australian Embassy, Washington DC (1996), The University of Queensland Customs House Gallery, Brisbane (1998), Suraci Gallery Marywood University, Pennsylvania (1999), Aquinas Gallery, Grand Rapids Michigan (2000) and Gallery 482 Brisbane (2001).