This work is part of a series which continues to draw inspiration and imagery from travels through country and out back NSW, exploring the themes of origin, time and nostalgia. At the Darling River there is an ancient concrete picnic table and broken brick fireplace that has been used by generations of families and friends to cook meals and spend time together. I've visited it many times. It repeatedly evokes a longing for times and family members past, and a scene for a gathering of a future generation.
Origin, time, mortality and nostalgia are the themes that permeate Joshua Parry’s art. A Sydney based artist, Joshua draws influence from the dusty, isolated landscapes of outback NSW, and QLD, and the Central Australian town of Broken Hill, a place of familial origins and regular connection. Annually Joshua travels out back, and rather than portray the cliché of the landscape as an untouched wilderness, he instead builds his compositions around the manmade objects that both occupy and litter the terrain; cars, caravans, mining poppet heads, picnic tables in forgotten places and the detritus of abandoned machinery. These elements do not ‘humanize’ the landscape, but instead accentuate its sense of remoteness. Joshua is an artist who is deeply influenced by his blue collar, rural Australian heritage. The landscape and its history make the artist acutely aware of the passage of time and the sublime, unfathomable agelessness of the Australian landscape.
