AUDIO DESCRIPTION #4
PHOTOGRAPHS 16-19

Crying
Kuba Dorabialski
Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham
August 17 - September 22 2023
Verge Gallery, University of Sydney, Gadigal Country

On this wall, four framed black and white landscape photographs are displayed in a straight line, each measuring 50 centimetres high and 50 centimetres wide. They areprinted on a soft textured paper called cotton rag and the frames are a pale raw oak with a bronze waterfall-like sculpture cascading from the bottom edge.

The second artwork from the left shows a clearing of pine trees across the bottom third of the photograph. Only debris and the flat round stumps of the evenly chopped trees remain. The perspective is at eye-level, and a smooth, narrow dirt road curvesthrough the clearing from near the bottom right edge of the photograph towards the left edge at the top of the bottom third. The clearing along the front edge of the photograph slopes gently downwards away from the road, while the clearing on the other side of the road slopes gently upwards towards the right. In the top two thirds of the image, behind the road and clearings, are dense rows of soft grey pine trees,standing vertically and sloping down in height from left to right. The narrow spaces between them appear black, and a light grey clear sky is visible above. A small cluster of darker grey pine trees, with their tips cut off by the top edge of the photograph, stand at the edges of both clearings on either side of the road—in the bottom left and top right. This location is a radiata pine plantation in Sunny Corner State Forest, Wiradjuri Country.

The last photograph on the right features an intimate close-up among the narrow pine trees, showing only their lower halves with their small spindly bare branches radiating out at an upwards angle the full length of their trunks. A narrow clearing starts at the bottom left corner and slopes up to the right edge. Behind this area, there is a thick forest of pine trees growing closely together. The perspective is ateye level, and the upper halves of the trees, from where their fuller foliage begins,are cut off at the top of the photograph. No sky is visible, and the scene appears very dark. The narrow spaces between the trunks are deep black, while the rest of the image consists of a range of greys, becoming darker and less defined at the top and the bottom of the photograph. Within this cluster, some of the thin trunks and branches have naturally fallen to the ground or are leaning against other trees. In contrast, a few trees have been broken, with distinctive jagged edges in light grey.This photograph was also taken in a radiata pine plantation in Sunny Corner State Forest, Wiradjuri Country.

All these black and white photographs in the exhibition ‘Crying’ have a dark tone and a soft quality, reminiscent of charcoal dust resting on the paper’s surface. They have a wide tonal range, with dark velvety black shadows, milky bright whites, and many shades of grey in between.