Figuring Landscapes: Artists’ Moving Image from Australia and the UK

This exhibition, co-curated by Ball, brought together significant contemporary works and some key historical pieces by 60 artist filmmakers (including Ball) from the UK and Australia. It investigated previously unresearched connections between the two countries, particularly with regard to historical and post-colonial approaches to landscape as explored and elaborated through artists’ moving image.

Curation was based on a historical overview of landscape related works, followed by a call for submissions throughout Australian and UK artists’ moving image networks, which elicited a large amount of recent work. Ball, Elwes and Australian associate curators decided to concentrate on contemporary work, with a smaller selection of historical works, for the final screening programmes to ensure that the exhibition was relevant to current concerns. Ball’s film, ‘The Ground, the Sky and the Island’ 2008, forms a ‘curatorial statement’ for ‘Figuring Landscapes’, narrating an imagined journal through experiments with composition and movement. The exhibition catalogue, co-edited by Ball, Elwes and Chua, contains an essay by Elwes and Ball.

The exhibition premiered at ArtSway, Hampshire (2008); the touring programme launched at Tate Modern 2009, touring to a further nine venues in the UK and Ireland and four in Australia 2009, 2010.

The project received financial support from Arts Council England, South East; Tate Modern; ArtSway; Australian High Commission, London; Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane.