Natural Selection is an exhibition that is all about wood, from hand-crafted pieces of furniture to wood as depicted by landscapes.
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Featured are paintings by Bullaburra artist Jeff Rigby, including his work, Tunnel Gully Creek. This shows the same site of Arthur Streeton's famous, Fire's On: Lapstone Tunnel, which was painted in the summer of 1891 and is now displayed in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The 23- year-old Streeton worked on his 6' x 4' canvas perched high on a ledge in that hot dry summer. Rigby said: ''Fire's On is a wonderful depiction of the full intensity of an Australian summer's day in the bush and the dust and activity of a construction site."
Today this site is no longer that place of activity and drama and Rigby's painting records instead a landscape now largely unremarkable, returned by nature to a heavily wooded valley. And so this modern version painted 130 years later tells a very particular story - of how nature reclaims.
Lawson-based wood sculptor Neil Fallows rescues worn and discarded pieces.
"The pieces of wood I collect carry various unique imprints of their former lives and I build on them as I work, responding to whatever the material reveals to me," he said.
Jeff Rigby's landscapes and Neil Fallow's stools, side tables and decorative pieces will be on show in 'Natural Selection' which opens at Arts Blue Mountains Gallery at 9 Honour Avenue in Lawson on Saturday, May 11 from 2-4 pm. All are welcome.
