AMANDA JOHNSON
Remnant Yellow: Tailings Dam Takayna
Acrylic and oil on canvas 127 x 96cm
$3500
My painting evokes logging and mining-related impacts on Takayna’s forests and rivers. The lurid, heightened palette builds a sense of ecological disturbance and uncanny mood. The silhouette is outwardly redolent of early colonial landscape painting, but is this an image of beauty or threat? Toxified soil and water will stop a forest from flourishing. Alongside, clearfelling and burning raise concerns about enduring biodiversity and the decline of rainforest species (Lindenmayer and Franklin, 1997, Hickey et al., 2001). This painting is therefore a visual lamentation that evokes toxicity, cautioning against impacts of underregulated timber and mineral extraction.