I’ve had an experience that’s made me think about why people make art.  It happened when I dropped in at the relocated Church Gallery, opposite the Perth Mosque, in William Street, Northbridge to see Tony Nathan’s show and be present for a floor talk by this ‘hot’ professional photographer, who won last year’s Perth Prize.  I’ve arrived ahead of the artist’s scheduled appearance and I’m looking at his superb aerial photographs of native trees in the bushland catchment forest around the Mundaring Dam.

But what’s this?  All of these photographs measuring about a metre square are turned on their sides (except one) and there’s another that’s shaped in a very odd way (but also on its side).  People are looking at these photographs with their heads cocked to one side so they can view them right side up.  I’m doing it too, and I’m getting a stiff neck.  Finally I decide to stand ‘tall’ and, with the help of gallery owner, Helen Morgan, some interesting additional ‘angles’ begin to emerge from Tony Nathan’s art.

By showing these trees in a horizontal aspect the photographer is provoking viewers to focus on the consequences of, say, old growth logging.  And right now there’s local controversy about the controlled ‘thinning’ of trees in the Mundaring catchment area because of scientific notions that they ‘drink’ too much water (but what about salinity?).  At this point Tony Nathan arrives and observes that this is also how you see trees from a helicopter when the chopper goes into a banked turn.  Additionally, aerial perspective is the way that our indigenous artists have traditionally depicted the Australian landscape.  Plus (for me) this different ‘perspective’ also turns these forest photographs into what I see as ‘drawings’.  You view these images differently with the trunks of the trees beginning to appear like horizontal hatching (this is interesting).

Tony Nathan explains that his original aim was to create colour field ‘paintings’ with his Hasselblad square format camera.  He’s achieved this very effectively through his intelligent use of nature’s ‘lighting’ at different times of day.  But then he began to think of the 1960s work of the American painter, Ellsworth Kelly.  Kelly created striking effects by positioning the shapes of things horizontally and painting their positive spaces in brilliant hard-edged colour.  That’s what Nathan’s single odd-shaped photograph is about.  It’s an acknowledgment of Kelly’s hard-edged horizontal method of depiction.  The photographer is saying, ‘Kelly did this, and I’m following from him.’

There are many Australian artists who’ve depicted landscape from an aerial perspective (Juniper, Fred Williams, Olson, the indigenous artists, and so on).  But Nathan is a man who’s doing this somewhat differently, and it’s thought provoking, and it’s now.  But what’s the ‘essential’ point of this?  Is ‘profit’ or ‘acclaim’ his driving force?  I don’t think so.  It costs to charter a helicopter and invest your time in producing thoughtful work like this.  A photographer with Nathan’s skills could make more money turning out portraits of babies for proud parents and family.  No, this is about ‘language’ and ‘communication’, and that’s a pretty good reason to make art.

Try to see Tony Nathan’s show.  And take a stroll in and around this area of William Street that has such a rich regional history.  Discover the messages of old advertising signs still faintly visible through successive layers of paint on buildings above and around the relocated Church Gallery.  See the new multi-cultural businesses that are ‘reinventing’ this place.  Realise that the Perth Mosque opposite the gallery occupies part of the site which was once the assembly area for the Afghan camel trains that played such an important role in Western Australia’s pioneering past.  Even the names on the streets here speak of our heritage and home.  Enjoy.