VISUAL ART

GEOFF DYER

Recent Paintings Despard Gallery Upstairs, 15 Castray Esplanade Until December 10 Price range: $13,950 to $65,000

If there is one thing that really reveals a person’s understanding of Tasmania, it is their relationship with the weather. This often translates to something as simple as taking a jumper or raincoat everywhere, even in summer, especially if you are heading out of town.

I don’t know if Tasmanian artist Geoff Dyer takes warm clothing with him when he heads to somewhere like Lake Pedder, but his paintings suggest he understands Tasmanian weather and how the air moves in the mountainous regions of the state where it is wild and heavy dark clouds are pregnant with thick, cold rain and sleet. Dyer knows these skies, and he paints them as if he has seen them a thousand times and they still fill him with wonder and respect. The dark sky has such weight.

This selection of works, though, is not a collection of examinations of dark skies – previous shows by Dyer have been loosely organised around such corralled ideas – but this show is broader, journeying through visions of Tasmania’s landscape.

The bitter cold of a frozen alpine landscape daubed with snow features in a number of these paintings, but so too does the totally dark rainforest green that one finds on walking right into the forest where the canopy is thick enough to hinder the sunlight from reaching the damp soil, and everything is tinged with a deep emerald, thick as molasses.

Dyer catches the lush presence of these pockets of the very thickest bush and finds the vibrating churn of a waterfall among them. The images here of Hogarth Falls, located not far from Strahan on the West Coast, are dense with the movement and sound of tumbling water.

Images of water and sky aside, there is another ingredient, strange enough to consider on its own. In three of Dyer’s works, fire can been seen on the horizon, and the paintings give the impression that we are either heading towards it or escaping from it.

The fire motif is not uncommon in Dyer’s art; some of his most celebrated and powerful works have captured the still-glowing effect of wildfire on the land, and as good as Dyer might be at capturing water and air, it is his works with fire that have a singular potency.

Here, the fire is distant and imaginary. We cannot know why the burning features in these works, but there is a visionary quality here that raises the stakes and turns this selection of work, all of it, into a distinct and almost mythical narrative.