One can both marvel at and enjoy the retrospective exhibition of Robert Juniper now showing at the Art Gallery of WA.  It is marvellous in the way the exhibition parallels the history and development of Western Australia, from rural backwater to modern metropolis.

Today, from a vantage point of affluence and material growth, it may be difficult to remember or imagine how hard and difficult the early days were.  Certainly there was limited time and inclination for what can be called broad spiritual values. Such religious spirituality that existed in the orthodox churches had been transferred from another time and place while the marginalized Aborigines were in no way able to present their own spiritual version of events.

It seems in retrospect that only the vision of the artist could transpose what was harsh, cruel, hot and intractable into something not only beautiful but indeed spiritual as well.

Perhaps it may even be necessary to have lived through the 40's, 50's and 60's in Perth and WA to fully understand the background against which Juniper worked and laboured to bring out and maintain his unique vision. This vision has been incorporated into the way Western Australians now view their myth of landscape. That myth, however viewed, contains a rightness and excitement that being Western Australian is akin to living in paradise. For the spiritual component of that paradise we owe Juniper's contribution an immense and lasting debt.