The exhibition, Nocturne is a compelling and eerie mix of childhood beasties and adult horrors projected onto the backdrop of the deep, dark Australian Bush.
Nocturne is a collaborations by Katherine Olston and Andrew Burrell in response to their seven-day art residency in the near-ghost town of Glen Davis (population 27) in the Greater Blue Mountains National Park, and a further residency at the Bundanon Trust .
Through installation, sculpture and interactive real-time 3d, and with reference to both horror movies and children’s books, the artists explore notions of personal internal fears and anxieties projected onto the larger external space of the Australian Bush. The work focuses on the Australian Bush as both an environment to be explored and a construct of the ‘colonial other’. The Bush is often seen and portrayed (by this colonizing other) as a mysterious place, often dangerous and usually to be feared. When combined with the darkness of the night, the sense of fear associated with the Bush is compounded and the menace of the unseen can materialize into reality..