Andrew Vukosav
Flying solo on journeys into remote terrain that can take days or weeks at a time, Andrew Vukosav has photographed a beautiful strangeness of the Australian continent, from a viewpoint that defiantly overturns tourist clichés of outback landscape.
An exhibition three years in the making, its imagery roams from the intricate and delicate filigrees of coastlines to the vast dunes and rock plateaus of the central Australian deserts.
The world seems to metamorphose between states of fluidity and stability, between atmospheric and geological strata. Crystalline saltpans glisten like immense snowdrifts or opalescent glaciers; the shallows of estuaries seem to swirl like clouds.
With decades of experience as a highly successful commercial photographer and a similarly long love of piloting, Vukosav sought a photographic experience different to that of holding the camera up to the cockpit window. With some intricate engineering, he fitted out his single engine Cessna 182 with a Phase One 150mp XF Camera mounted in the underbelly of the fuselage.
Something unusual happens with this. The whole plane becomes the camera body, pitching and banking into position for each shot, like a solitary eye looking this way and that. As a consequence, photographs do not feel as if they are framed through a viewfinder or from within a cockpit, but have a sense of radically open space. They give us as much an experience of the open sky around as they do of the vast earth below.
Why I do this: “I do this for many reasons: Love, passion, adventure, freedom... But when I really think about it, the main reason for this project is to raise awareness of the fragility of our beautiful country and the importance of
sustainability so that the treasure we have can endure for future generations”.
Acknowledgement of Country: We acknowledge and respect the Traditional Custodians whose ancestral lands we live and work upon and we pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
We acknowledge and respect the deep spiritual connection and the relationship that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have to Country.
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