Remember

Robert Hirschmann’s paintings, drawings and sculpture engage the subject of landscape via the language of expressive abstraction. This drawing is from a series of works relating to the landscape of the Warby Ranges in Victoria in which the artist explores the ideas of marking territory, histories embodied in the landscape, and remembrance. Over the years this region has been subject to extreme conditions, from fires and drought to rain, marking the landscape. At one point, due to extreme weather some older trees were uprooted exposing their underside root systems, which proved a rich vein of inspiration for the artist. Remember comes from a series of drawings (Samesame, 2017) which developed from a 2014 series in which the artist used a chainsaw to score plywood boards to make ‘chainsaw drawings’. Remember was made by creating a rubbing in graphite from one of these early chainsaw drawings, with further drawing over the top.