When I was in Australia, I visited Coober Pedy and bought this postcard showing a local living room. Coober Pedy is an opal-mining settlement in one of the most inhospitable regions of the Australian outback. The Coober Pedy postcard included something very familiar to me, a seascape shown over the sideboard. There was something poignant about these waves hundreds of miles from any ocean. This particular kind of mass-produced seascape exists in England only as miniatures on old postcards. The combination of symbols in the Coober Pedy postcard - desert, cave, and sea - led me to muse on deeper psychological issues, while the two sorts of 'art' - decor and reproduction - suggested other kinds of intriguing relationships. Finally, 'it made sense' to bring this postcard home to England and paint studies which return the image to some kind of 'original' state, completing the cycle.
Susan Hiller, 1983.
Hiller provides another endnote to the cycle with the exhibition of these 12 studies in Australia. Exhibited at CCP with the assistance of the Experimental Art Foundation.

Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George St, Fitzroy Victoria 3065, Australia
info@ccp.org.au
+61 39417 1549
FB / TW / IG
Gallery Hours
Wednesday—Sunday
11am—5pm
Seven nights after dark