'The Last Stand'

Art Statement

The Central Plateau of Tasmania is home to a few stands of heroic trees. Incredibly, the resilient Miena Cider Gum is approaching extinction. Sap from this Weeping Tree was used by Aboriginal people to make Wayalinah, a fermented cider drink, but today these trees are facing environmental Armageddon. Once heroic warriors of the highlands, their ranks are now littered with the eerie hulks of weathered wood, limbs battle-weary and spent. Standing alone is the ghostly form of a rearing horse. Defiant, magnificent, haunting, an effigy frozen in time and harbinger of the new Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse - us.

- Fiona Francois -