Exhibition: Afterlife – Kevin Frost

‘The Midlands of Tasmania is sheep country. Once forested, the country has largely become an open expanse of grasslands in rocky soils lined edged with bush thickets and shrubbery. The place is neither developed, or only minimally, nor is it wilderness. Instead, it’s actually the flocks of sheep who determine how things go with the landscape. The country is spacious, open, quiet but for the wind, and accomodating, in spite of everything being fenced. Nearly all my exposures were taken from the road, not far from my little hatchback Toyota where I keep my roll film view camera handy. The sheep stations are large and so the country is sparsely populated. Many of the roads were never paved and infrequently travelled. That’s perfect. You can poke along at 10-15 kph, in a leisurely way, looking here and there, and unlikely to see a passing vehicle for maybe half an hour. On these dirt roads weaving through the Midlands the air is full of lost dreams.

One, at times, encounters what were once prosperous estates, with suitable masonry monuments to flank elegant popular lined driveways, or sometimes massive pines planted in the previous century. The driveway leads up to substantial and once wealthy residence, but now long boarded up and used as just another out building, storage maybe. Here, the lights went out long ago. Once there was a prosperous life, high society and all, but now decayed, buildings still standing, an afterlife of what once was. The lost dreams inhabit the place but the place is in no rush to erase their traces. It’s a lonely and spacious place where we can all be at ease with our muses. It’s the same with the trees that were kept here and there to shade the flocks, many now long dead. Snags. Trees that died long ago but still remain hospitable to birds and insects. They remain standing, albeit with piles of sun whitened limbs heaped up about their trunks. Here to, a certain afterlife. It’s this ephemeral element of the place that sustains my photographic meanderings; the landscape mirrors what’s important to me’. Kevin Frost

Artist Statement Kevin Frost

My photographic work focuses on what we might term ‘the inhabited landscape’. It’s not an environmental report or much concerned with ‘the hand of man’ but rather a quest for situated places and portraits – trees mainly – that inhabit and define their little environmental neighbourhoods. These are characterised by prominent relationships or maybe sites of aloneness, and often somewhat haunted by processes of decay. I aim to focus and frame things so they can be completely what they are, sans commentary. My f64 background fostering large format technique and carefully crafted prints are ideal for this sense of ‘thingness’, different from ‘objectivity’. Many are portraits; I like to portray the sitter in a dignified and uncomplicated manner, clear and distinct. Others are close framings from afar, more ‘candid’ views, maybe cool and distantiated. But generally I long for spaciousness, open vistas, a kind of emptiness, and quiet. A space that accommodates contemplative reflections, musings, and seeing things. I rely on the qualities of crisp local contrast and tonal depth of ground the reflective and emotional qualities that inspired the exposure in the first place. My aim is to ‘see’ what might be very ordinary vistas while being moved by the inherent magic that only reveals itself when you’ve somehow managed to take it in as it is. A certain slowness is involved here, indifferent to dramatic and eye catching diversions. There’s such a thing as ordinary magic.

The main purpose of these photographs is to assemble boxed collections, folios of mounted prints intended for ‘hands on’ viewing, really the best way to appreciate prints, to be viewed by photographers and collectors in the area in an effort to build up a photographic culture in Hobart. I intend to continue this ‘Afterlife’ series of Midlands photographs, and other projects, in the coming months and years, building up a substantial, multifaceted, and carefully curated collection of silver gelatin prints available for interested viewing.

TopSpace Studio, Hobart. 30 October – 20 November 2025