This is me.

This is me.
This is where
I come from.
I belong here.
Look at this.
This is
me.
This is who I am.






Welcome to FRONTIERLAND

What follows sets out
a very thin text,
poetic and prosaic.

It is designed
to accompany
images
in a folio
of digital prints
of paintings by

DAVID PORTER.

Excerpts
in large format and small
might also be used
in an exhibition
featuring the
paintings.

There
are
about
150
images
comprising
a
three
volume
folio
of studio shots,
stacks,
panoramas,
composite canvasses
and individual paintings.

It has been
set it up
in this way
to show
how the
images
might be
fitted
together.



The work represents a cross section
of my studio output over the past
couple of years
(2005-2006)
and a refinement
of the themes
developed in works
featured in my last
five or six shows.



There are about 80
earlier images that
can be viewed on
www.davidporter.com.au

The site
will provide some idea of
where I have come from
and where I am going.


The site

also details various
public art projects
I have been responsible
for including the billboards
… various citations etc
and a cv



I am a landscape artist,
with designs on big
highway billboards.

If it is art
it is art that stands for
the straight line
truths of Modernism
and the straight line
truth through all of it
goes to

the land,
our sense
of who we are,
where we belong
and how
we come to
be here.







I can’t paint gum trees
And I am not drawn
to the wonders of nature.

I dwell upon
the cultural landscape.
What interests me are
the ways in which
we have put our roots down here
and changed the landscape.


It is a vision of the landscape
in the heroic tradition
in a frontier land
with nature and
civilisation
in opposition.

We are on the frontline here,
not merely eyewitnesses
to these things.

This is who we are.


The paintings are postcards
from for the land
of my imagination.

There is a dark
sensibility pervading them;
a sense of our brief history
here in umber tones
and a vision of our future
cut out in blacks.

It is alien corn
but it is very familiar.
This is where I live.
This is home.


The whole body of work
is inspired by
a vision
of Melbourne’s
wider

setting.



It is Melbourne.
This is the view from
88 floors up,
not of a city
but of a land
out there beyond
the limits.

It is a panorama of
MELBOURNE
in circumference.

At the time of writing
about 150 completed canvasses
pan about 200 degrees
in long distance sequences
with foreground images
and silhouettes
stacked and abutting
in various layers
floor to ceiling.

The panorama
describes
a land
of strange beauty
at the bottom
of the world,
with distant mountains
surrounding it,
rising up from distant plains
and a temperate
parkland
spreading outwards:


Mt Macedon
in the distance,

the Dandenongs
in blue,

Arthur’s Seat,
The You Yangs,

Mt Cotteral sparkling
in a wintery sunset,

Port Phillip Bay
in realms of gold.

My last four or five
shows have featured
the landscape of
Melbourne’s
western plains:
empty paddocks,
back roads, highways,
distant hills,
skies leaden
and broken.



These elements
make up
the vocabulary
of my current work.


It is a wide reconnaissance
of Batmanland
at the bottom of the world
with a civilised order
scratched into a landscape
of paddocks and trees,
hills in the distance,
thistles and rocks
and the tendrils
of civilisation
spreading
around us.


This is
as I remember it,
on day trips to the hills
and journeys to places
completely forgotten:
beach holidays,
weekends
out there,
wattle tree roads,
and fish and chip places
with foregrounds
of highways and industry,
new housing estates
long grass and thistle
and long distance
vistas in
pastel violets
and yellows,
olives and greys.

In the past
five years or so
I have been out there
driving the back roads
and highways
through the wastelands
of nowhere between
here and there.
We don’t go there often.
We are just passing through
but this is what I call home.





My studio has a leafy outlook

down a pathway
to a quiet street.

Cars pass, occasionally,

a woman with a pram.

It’s a small world I inhabit,
between here and the shops
but the psychic geography
spreads to the horizons.



The houses are empty,
factories, shops
but there are
people here.


It’s a civilised order.
They seem well adapted.
They have thrived.
This is the new way.


This
is
how
we
live
now.




This is where I come from
This is where I belong
but…please,
excuse me.
I am not sure
this is me
I am not sure
I belong here.



I do have misgivings.
Am I trespassing here?

Is this really
where I come from?



Do I really
belong here?
Is this who I am
and how is it that
I am here,
and we are here,
upon this earth,
upon this land,
at the bottom
of the world,


in this far distant corner,
in a place called
Melbourne.

Is this me?
Is this home?



Is
this
what
we
call
home?




with the hot western plains in our faces
and the dark encroachment
of the mountains
behind us.

Here…
in Melbourne
with the weather
at us
north,
south,
east,
west.
Hot,
cold,
wet,
dry.












Here with the whole continent
at our back door,
the inland blasting
at us
and brass
blue
skies
burning
naked
flesh
like
fire.


Is this my natal soil?

Here … with the
Great
Southern
Ocean
swirling
below
us
and shards of
Antarctica
pounding
the shores.


Is this what we call home?



These misgivings
make up the underlay
of narrative lines running
through these paintings.

There is a
a growing unease
regarding the questions
set out above

and below.

What are we doing here?
and by what right?

For me

there is an urgency
about these questions
regarding,
in particular,
our place
in this landscape,
our sense of nation
and nationality.

Do we belong here?

Is this me?
Is this
who I am?

Is this what
we are to call

home.




Allow me
to introduce myself;
My name is
David Porter.
Landscape Painter.

The claim
I have staked out
for myself
extends to those distant hills
that rise up (above)
in a
wide circumference
around me.
This is
my home.

See more about me on
http://www.davidporter.com.au/



I live in East St Kilda
and I work at home.
You can phone me on
(03) 9527 9187.
You can e-mail me on
retropdivad@hotmail.com




The themes alluded to above
diffuse all three volumes and
coalesce
in my mind’s eye
in a show about
MELBOURNE


I want to do a show
featuring work like this.


At present
I am working
on a DVA grant
on a series featuring
Victoria’s Avenues of Honour
for an exhibition at The Shrine
in 2007.









I have divided the work into
three separate groupings:




Batmanland describes
Melbourne’s wider setting


Hebdomeros groups
the city images together.


Roots in the Earth
is the working title for
what will be
a separate show featuring
Victoria’s Avenues of Honour
opening in July 2007
at Melbourne’s
Shrine of Remembrance



The panorama use work from all three.


Four texts are of particular
relevance:

The Melbourne Phone Book (2004)
is a constant source of wonderment
and inspiration for me.

John Batman’s Journal of 1835
likewise



“Hebdomeros” a novel
by Italian surrealist Giorgio De Cherico
in which he imagines life in Melbourne
circa 1954.

and

Melways The 17th Edition (1993)
which will be useful to anyone
trying to understand how the land lies here.



The images
have not been captioned.

They are all oil paintings
on stretched canvas.

All executed in 04-06

Sizes vary.

Some are very large.
“The Road to Jericho”,
(The billboard on the Cathedral lawns)
20 feet x 8 feet,

The smaller ones,
half of them
36cms x 28 cms.





DAVID PORTER
August 2006


Would you like to see the paintings?
You can call me on 95279187.





It is expected
that in due course
all three volumes
will be posted on
www.davidporter.com.au
and made available
to enquirers
on cd”.