Exhibition: The Salt Lake – Murray Fredericks

The Salt Lake is a major survey exhibition of Murray Fredericks that brings together Salt, Array, Vanityand his most recent series, Blaze.

‘Over the last 20 years, Murray Fredericks has established himself as one of the leading international artists challenging the traditions of landscape photography. In 2003 Murray Fredericks first visited Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, one of the world’s largest salt lakes, located in the deserts of central Australia. Driven by the boundless potential of abstract space, Fredericks has returned 31 times over the past two decades, exploring perceptual states of being. His chapters, or ‘cycles’ as he calls them, have explored interventions with mirrors, and more recently fire, capturing infinity and the void through the lens of contemplative minimalism. Defined by light, colour and space, Fredericks’s photographs are a phenomenological response to the experience of existing in an ostensibly empty place without scale’. Curator | Angela Connor, MAPh Senior Curator

About Murray Fredericks:
Sydney-based, Murray Fredericks (b. 1970) is an international award–winning artist and film maker, collected by significant public institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Portrait Gallery, and the private collections of Elton John and Valentino. His projects have resulted in large-scale, minimalistic photographs and taken him through the terrains of Greenland, Lake Eyre and the Himalayas. His specialist knowledge of landscape has led to him to being highly regarded as a cinematographer and photographer, working on BBC/David Attenborough productions, The Dark Emu Story (2023), The Drover’s Wife (2021) and the television series Mystery Road (2018). His documentary film Salt (2009) won twelve major awards including the Melbourne International Film Festival) Camerimage ‘Golden Frog’ for Cinematography and Best Documentary Short at the International Documentary Association Los Angeles. This documentary travelled worldwide, including to Moscow, Amsterdam, and Washington DC.

Museum of Australian Photography, Wheelers Hill, Victoria 25 November 2023 – 18 February 2024 

Photograph above. Salt 300 (Tent & Bike) 2005. 120 x 250 cm inkjet print.