By Callum Ludwig
Partners Andrew Darling and Szara Fox have collaborated on many musical ventures together, notably in delivering the Small Hall Gyspy Cabaret in East Warburton and playing at local venues, but their passions for photography and poetry hadn’t yet crossed over.
They will now, however, when their Coalescence exhibition officially opens at the Warburton Arts Centre on Friday 26 October from 6pm to 8pm.
Mr Darling said music has always been the shared work that they create together, but they have other lives within different art forms.
“I’ve been writing poetry for probably 35 years since I was 15 years old and Szara did her formal arts training over in the Netherlands and is an incredible photographer, she makes these incredible photography artworks that are the product of overlaying several images and then digitally manipulating them to create these almost miraculous hidden illuminations,” he said.
“Over time, we started to work on these things in parallel and we would do things where, for example, I would write a poem that was a direct response or directly inspired by one of Szara’s artworks or she would do the opposite.”
The pair were inspired to create the exhibition after seeing Yarra Ranges Council calling for expressions of interest in using the Warburton Arts Centre.
Mr Darling said the poetry and the photography have come together in different ways, which is part of what is so interesting about the exhibition.
“Some of them we did have a look and we almost magically found that some that were already created independently just fit together like they were meant to be,” he said.
“It’s very different to songwriting where it’s almost formulaic how you write a song, it’s been a real journey.”
Ms Fox has a Bachelor’s degree with honours in photography having studied fine arts in the Netherlands for five years.
Ms Fox said she had a lot of exhibitions in the Netherlands, including some quite big ones, with photography festivals.
“In my photography over the years, I’ve been really directed towards nature scapes and landscapes because I’ve been travelling a lot, these images that I’ve taken over the last 15 years I’ve been combining, but prior to my travels when I was still in the Netherlands, I was doing a similar kind of work, not layering the image, but having a similar topic where I create, combine the visible and invisible realities together,” she said.
“It creates something like a vision that brings the layers that aren’t visible forwards, if that makes sense and it’s common that these works are connected to travel and nature.”
Mr Darling’s life work has largely consisted of being a musician and a music teacher in local high schools.
However, he said writing poetry was where he started as an artist.
“I studied poetry at Queensland Uni before I ever studied music, I would say that throughout my entire 30-year career as a musician, writing poetry has been my constant silent companion the entire time and in terms of songwriting, my lyrics are aiming to write poetry within song lyrics,” he said.
“For me, poetry is a way that I explore and understand myself, it’s a way I heal the more difficult emotions inside myself that accumulate through living and it’s a way I take the beauty that I see around me all the time and articulate it in a way that perhaps can be shared with other people.”
Coalescence will be able to be viewed for six weeks from the opening.
Both Mr Darling and Ms Fox feel it was special to be able to bring their work together.
“It’s a fascinating and inspiring journey because as an artist, there are so many different areas you can potentially work in so for us to be able to bring those other qualities that we have in the creative field together is a beautiful and stunning thing, as well as the love we share,” Ms Fox said.
“I just think about how beautiful and inspirational it is that the thing that I’ve written wouldn’t exist without that image and without our love, that’s one way to look at this exhibition, is that it’s a pure expression of our love,” Mr Darling said.
