Exhibition: Memories of a River by Bob Kersey

Photographs from several road trips to the Murray Darling Basin by Bob Kersey.

‘Kinchega National Park on the banks of the Darling River is an entrancing oasis of calm within the surrounding outback country. Australia’s longest river system runs through it – a river system that brings life to a desert region in the driest inhabited continent on Earth. Traditional owners name it, the Barka.

The Barka is pronounced dead. Investigation is for another day.

However, the function of this body of work, Memories of a River is to create awareness to promulgate enquiries that inevitably will unravel. Looking through my archive I have selected images that support a modest portfolio of some ten or eleven photographs that do no more than remind us that the natural world is not bulletproof, though we sometimes might think so. Displayed are vintage prints in silver gelatin and platinum palladium dating back fifteen years. They tell us about the river that was. Personally, I am as curious as anyone to see what the cumulative message will be from the walls of the gallery.

This modest work is less about what Is, than it’s about what’s Next.’ Bob Kersey.