LANDSCAPE: A CALLIGRAPHY OF ROCKS

JULIEN PLAYOUST

Scieppan Gallery presents Landscape: A Calligraphy of Rocks, a new series of paintings by Julien Playoust. Shaped by his long-standing connection to country, the series draws on Julien's memories of Millambri, his family property west of Orange in the Central West of NSW.

Over time, Julien has developed a way of seeing and interpreting the land, revealing subtle relationships between landscape and labour, person and place.

What Julien captures in the landscape is not something revealed immediately. The richness of his work comes from prolonged periods spent immersed in the landscape, developing an ongoing enquiry through which quieter revelations emerge. These are things that cannot easily be expressed in words but are revealed through sustained attention to the landscape itself, as the land seems to speak back. In this way, he draws out a language of landscape, a calligraphy of rocks.

Working primarily through plein air oil painting, the works focus on the area around The Waterfall, where ancient limestone strata, native scrub and grazing pasture converge, revealing a layered relationship between the natural environment and the traces of industry and agriculture.

Across the exhibition, rocks and trees become subjects of contemplation, with Playoust adopting an anthropomorphic lens to reflect his own experiences and observations. Beneath this dialogue with place is a broader reflection on what we bring to a landscape and what we leave behind: our impact and our yield.