The Lake
Friday 28 August to Saturday 10 October
 2009
Australian Centre for Photography
Gallery 1&2
Narelle Autio, Jane Burton, Rebecca Dagnall, Murray Fredericks, Alexander James, David Mackenzie and Craig Bender, David McDowell, Troy Ruffels and Martin Walch
Curated by Malcolm Smith
"The Antipodes was a world of reversals, the dark subconscious of Britain. It was, for all intents and purposes, Gothic par excellence, the dungeon of the world." G. Turcotte, Australian Gothic 1998
Since colonial settlement the Australian landscape has been depicted by artists and writers as a haunted wilderness. The 'dark continent' at the end of the world was blank page onto which Europe could project their gothic fantasies.
In this exhibition eight contemporary photomedia artists explore the exquisite strangeness of the Australian landscape. Many of these images have been created in and around Australian lakes - Lake Eyre, Lake George or the man-made lakes resulting from the damming of Tasmania's rivers. But on another level, The Lake also serves as a metaphor for places that are at once seductive and dangerous, on whose mirrored surfaces our dark desires are reflected back at us.
