Heat haze I


Barbara BRASH
Australian 1925–1998

Heat haze I 1974 
colour screenprint and mixed media; edition 8/10
Colin Holden Charitable Trust
© the estate of the artist

Throughout the 1970s, the Australian landscape became a focal point for Brash. In 1970 and 1971 she travelled extensively throughout north Queensland by four-wheel drive, eventually making her way west from Cooktown to the Kimberleys in Western Australia. The desert environments she encountered and observed during these trips provided artistic inspiration, becoming the subject of a 1977 exhibition titled Heat Haze.

In this work from 1974, the shimmering and radiating heat of the Australian outback is made manifest through Brash’s use of mirrored abstract forms, which bisect a golden desert plain and a white sky. Tissue paper adhered to the printed surface conjures images of dried and cracking earth, this effect is enhanced by the selective application of ink through a wider, open mesh screen that deposits a layer of small squares at various points throughout the composition.

Listen symb
Click here to listen

Read by a voluntary Geelong Gallery Guide