I have been involved in an artistic exploration of issues of space, cross cultural understanding and difference, of transplanted peoples, their ideas, cultural assumptions and history. Several years ago I found an old (by Australian standards) book. This book was published in London in 1783 thus falling neatly between Cook's 'discovery' of Australia (yet to be named) and the arrival of the First Fleet, and was an exploration of the 'Practice of Perspective' by Carrington Bowles. It seemed to me that this book embodied both the process of transportation/importation and the content of what was transported. This was a Eurocentric vision flavoured by the self-confidence of the Enlightenment which combined an understanding of the mechanics of optics and optical illusion and the willingness to expose how such illusions can be created. The suggestion of three dimensions by the imposition of an invisible grid has become a Western pictorial convention. This involves an element of intellectual game playing, using optical tricks to create the illusion of approach and retreat, toying with the desire of the viewer to believe what they see whilst revealing to them the mechanics of the game.

The conjunction of that particular book on perspective (a tool for describing what you see) with my pre-existing concerns with the nature of vision, visuality and the existence of a coherent visual language (which is also a shorthand system full of cultural assumptions) encouraged me to turn the method back on itself to see if it would allow another way of seeing and experiencing. In other words, instead of leaving the formal perspectives buried and inferred in the composition of the picture I wanted to make them explicit. A recent trip to the Pilbara has introduced this very particular landscape to my paintings - the intensity of light and colour in what is a skeletal, mineral world. My concerns with measurement and bodyscanning, mapping and exploration have been given full play in the paintings that I have made in the past two years.