An Artist’s View of Flinders Island
There is no place quite like Flinders Island. One of the Furneaux Group of Bass Strait islands off the north-eastern tip of Tasmania, Flinders is a unique landscape rich in biodiversity and splendour. The granite coast is astonishing in form and colour: contours painted red, yellow and green with lichen sweep into the sea and boulders juxtaposed with ragged limestone cliffs, balance precariously. Each beach shares its fairytale in variations of aqua-blue water, white sand, chiselled arches and crimson rocks.
The ocean laps in gentle conversation or rages as crashing waves. Mount Strzelecki towers above, draped in clouds or glowing in the sun. This is a delightful place where seas meet mountain slopes, wildlife perches, calls or dances at nearly every corner, nights twinkle with endless stars, wind howls and locals welcome you like old friends.
The felt sense of peace on Flinders Island is coupled with sadness and abhorrence at the devastation for Aboriginal Tasmanians captured by European settlers and imprisoned at Wybalenna in the 1830’s and 40’s. It is a history that whispers in the landscape and weighs on your heart and mind.
You can purchase Flinders Island, a new book of photographs by Arwen Dyer and Wolfgang Glowacki, by contacting Arwen via her website www.arwendyer.com. Arwen’s Artist in Residence on Flinders Island, and the book, were crowd-funded by Pozible and a grant from Arts Tasmania. Her latest book, Luminosity: Star, Sky & Sea, will be launched at Fullers Bookstore, Hobart, at 5:30pm on the 19th of February 2015. Her photographs will also feature alongside those of other artists at Island Light, a photography exhibition, at the Long Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre from 23rd January to 4th February 2015. For more information, visit http://www.salarts.org.au/event/island-light/
Arwen is a photographer and creative artist from Hobart, Tasmania. While she has worked in various creative modalities, including ceramics, visual arts and dance, nature photography has been her primary mode of artistic expression for the past five years. With photography, she combines her creative ideas with a love of wild places, light and pattern. She seeks to represent emotional responses to place, landscape and natural phenomena, thereby evoking a response in the viewer. Arwen has a particular interest in macro and night photography: both illuminate worlds that we do not often stop to immerse in and appreciate. Through her photographs, she aims to portray the unique beauty of the Tasmanian wilderness and to raise awareness of its need for protection. Arwen recently held a joint exhibition with multi-media artist Andrea Breen titled Celestial Listening (Sidespace Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, April 2014) and has had photographs exhibited in various other exhibitions, including the Weld Echo, Love the Tarkine and Kingborough Art Prize. Arwen also works as an arts and play therapist, having graduated with a Masters of Creative Arts Therapy in 2009.
