Point to Point, 1988

TIM STORRIER
Point to Point, 1988
Acrylic and rope on linen canvas
180 x 900 cm

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Artist, Tim Storrier, title, Point to Point, 1988. Point to Point is characteristic of a number of works by Tim Storrier in which fire, earth, water and air are featured within vast elemental Australian landscapes. In this mixed media work, a blazing rope stretches across a dark empty landscape, its curving form contrasting with the stark straight line of the horizon. Beyond this, the ground is a light with secondary blazes that scatter sparks into a smoke-filled night sky. While physically real, the rope has an ambiguous quality as it appears both connected to the earth and suspended in the air, forming a kind of symbolic barrier. It emerges from the dark, umber background as a white, hot, burning light. At mists this luminous energy, it is almost possible to hear the fires crackling and to smell the smoke haze, with the work conveying a sense of beauty and destruction entwined. In the Australian bush, fire is an element of both annihilation and renewal, reflecting cycles of life. Storrier has created a number of works encompassing this theme, which have been described as suggesting, quote, a linear progression through time and space, symbolic of the journey, unquote. Created in wide format, with overarching sky and pinpoint stars, point to point has a monumental quality, its vastness almost suggesting the curve of the Earth. In this immense environment, human presence, which is absent but implied, seems infinitely small.