The salt lake is a major survey exhibition of Murray Fredericks that brings together Salt, Array, Vanity and his most recent series, Blaze.
Murray FREDERICKS
Salt 300 (Tent & Bike) 2005
pigment print on cotton rag
120.0 x 250.0 cm
Courtesy of the artist and ARC ONE Gallery (Melbourne)
Over the last 20 years, Murray Fredericks has established himself as one of the leading international artists challenging the traditions of landscape photography. In 2003 Murray Fredericks first visited Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, one of the world’s largest salt lakes, located in the deserts of central Australia. Driven by the boundless potential of abstract space, Fredericks has returned 31 times over the past two decades, exploring perceptual states of being. His chapters, or ‘cycles’ as he calls them, have explored interventions with mirrors, and more recently fire, capturing infinity and the void through the lens of contemplative minimalism. Defined by light, colour and space, Fredericks’s photographs are a phenomenological response to the experience of existing in an ostensibly empty place without scale.
Curator | Angela Connor, MAPh Senior Curator
Salt 304 2009
pigment ink-jet print
150.0 x 400.0 cm
Courtesy of the artist and ARC ONE Gallery (Melbourne)
‘The salt lake brings together twenty years of working on a deeply personal project, from an artist that is familiar with pushing himself to the extreme both physically and mentally. His works traverse time and place, frequently utilising weather, reflection, perspective, light and darkness to transcend the literal matter of the subject itself.
‘Curatorially, the exhibition is divided across two spaces. The first space exhibits the internationally renowned Salt works. These works convey a personal approach to the landscape and the emotional and metaphysical qualities associated with Fredericks’s artistic journey spent confronted with infinity. The anchor to the images is the horizon line in all its different shades, which divides the composition into the earthly and celestial.
‘In the second gallery space are works predominantly taken in the early 2000s. The late 1990s and early 2000s were formative years for Fredericks, where his interest in Eastern philosophy developed alongside his research into minimalism and post minimalism. Whilst studying his Master of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts, Fredericks also made the conscious decision to reject the literal portrayal of wilderness and the cliches and associations those images brought with them. The confluence of these investigations resulted in photographs that are studies on the void that lead the viewer into the abyss.’
– Angela Connor, Senior Curator, Museum of Australian Photography
Sydney-based, Murray Fredericks (b. 1970) is an international award–winning artist and film maker, collected by significant public institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Portrait Gallery, and the private collections of Elton John and Valentino. His projects have resulted in large-scale, minimalistic photographs and taken him through the terrains of Greenland, Lake Eyre and the Himalayas. His specialist knowledge of landscape has led to him to being highly regarded as a cinematographer and photographer, working on BBC/David Attenborough productions, The Dark Emu Story (2023), The Drover’s Wife (2021) and the television series Mystery Road (2018). His documentary film Salt (2009) won twelve major awards including the Melbourne International Film Festival) Camerimage ‘Golden Frog’ for Cinematography and Best Documentary Short at the International Documentary Association Los Angeles. This documentary travelled worldwide, including to Moscow, Amsterdam, and Washington DC.
The Museum of Australian Photography and Murray Fredericks acknowledge the Arabana people as the Traditional Owners of Kati-Thanda Lake Eyre and recognise their continuing connection to the land and waterways.
Murray Fredericks discusses his landscape photography practice and 2023 exhibition The Salt Lake at the Museum of Australian Photography with RMIT academic Assoc. Prof. Shane Hulbert.