Janet Laurence | Fabled

30 March – 5 May 2012



Janet Laurence Fabled 10 – Sun bear (helarctos malayanus) vulnerable, 2011 camera-trap images of animals in the wild of Aceh, Sumatra, archival pigment prints on cotton rag, image 25 x 30 cm

For Fabled, Janet Laurence has developed a suite of photographs and wall-based constructions that continue her devotion to the vulnerable in the natural world. Laurence has taken imagery from the Tarkine, an old growth forest in Tasmania, and constructed a multi-panel work. A green void is presented to us, depicting a verdant site now under threat, having recently been reopened for deforestation and mining.

In a separate gallery images of animals in the wild of Aceh, Sumatra, are captured unaware, as a camera triggered by their movement shows them in their natural state. Laurence draws out the inherent tension between these two worlds, both of which are in a state of flux and danger. Poised as if before the fall, these works explore the photographic moment, their subjects captured momentarily in time. They exist both as archive, and as a living index for the wilderness, that fabled, fragile and ghostly space that we always wish to be there, but so often overlook.