Fallow - Dr. Bette Mifsud

Fallow by NSW artist Dr. Bette Mifsud - Finalist in the 2024 Heysen Prize for Landscape. 

Fallow’s diptych photographs were taken seconds apart while travelling through central NSW. The plywood grain is visible through the transparencies to form part of the landscapes, because both the rural places and plywood were ‘manufactured’. Fallow was influenced by the emotive and emblematic power of landscape painting, such as by Casper David Friedrich, Théodore Rousseau. Friedrich’s often bleak, spare, horizon-less landscapes evoke feelings of isolation and loss. Rousseau’s were not necessarily the typical picturesque landscapes of his contemporaries. He saw inherent beauty in unruly trees and places. Rural NSW was initially shaped by pastoralists who sought to ‘tame’ this unceded First Nations’ Country, resulting in its obliteration. Such landscapes often contain sparse trees and copious weeds. These broken places are neither Indigenous nor European. They seem to belong to no one and are easily overlooked. Fallow seeks to draw attention to them by salvaging something of their own poignant beauty. 

Materials: Photographic transparency bonded to plywood 
Dimensions (cm): 37 H x 91 W (diptych)

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