Rod Moss | FireWorks Gallery

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Selected works

FW12070 The standoff	FW12069 The calling of Dallas Gorey	FW12068 But these are only our kids' toy guns
FW12067 The diagnosis of Dr. Morse	FW12058 The hard light of day: on the tow	FW10479 King of the castle
FW2248 Card players II	FW10459 Big meat morning	FW13577 TV at Reenie's Camp
FW17696 Ascension	FW17697 Deep waters	FW17699 Umbilical
FW17700 See how they run: Todd River Regatta	FW17701 Fitness	FW17702 Discovering the gridded city

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Biography

Born: 1948 Ferntree Gully VIC

After graduating from a Masters of Art at Monash University, Rod moved to Alice Springs. His drawings and paintings are full of arresting imagery that offers viewers a closer look into Aboriginal daily life in the desert. Often perplexing but always engaging, Rod’s graphic works can appear both mundane and sardonic. Suggestive poses by the Aboriginal subjects simultaneously challenge both our knowledge and ignorance of Indigenous life, with Rod often wryly quoting famous masterworks from European painting history including those of Manet, Bellini and Caravaggio. Since 1984, Rod has won or been acquired for various awards in the Alice Springs region, including The Alice Prize, The Tennant Creek Prize and the Northern Territory Art Award. His works are held in numerous private, corporate and public collections nationally.

Through his painting and drawing Rod interprets the cultural interface between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Central Australia where he resides. Using graphite and synthetic polymer paint he carefully constructs narratives that challenge conventional images and endow his subjects with a common humanity. The blinding light of the desert environment renders a new way of seeing and elicits a gentle interrogation of the nature of what is accepted as realism.

Excerpt from LOOK CLOSER catalogue essay for The Hard Light of Day: Rod Moss 2006, Rex Butler 2005

Story/Statement

UMBILICAL FW17699 70 x 132cms 2017
High above the town a group of indigenous kids tug-o -war with unseen combatants. In the valley below, nestles the gridded city of Alice Springs. In the distance, Heavitree Gap, where in another painting, Sisyphus struggles to ‘close the gap.’ Two contestants mask their identity. And what is the prize?

SEE HOW THEY RUN: TODD RIVER REGATTA FW17700 84 x 124cms 2017
A farce in reality deserved farcical treatment. The annual August Alice Springs Henley On Todd attracts massive crowds both locally and from elsewhere. The event doesn’t interest Jude Johnson at left, whose red headband expresses more serious concerns (an indication that he has been attending law-making initiation business). Clifford Webb, echoing Goya’s, Colossus, happily urges on the team of three indigenous lads leading the field. Next, though travelling blind-sided, are a team representing local indigenous TV station, Imparge, bearing Noah’s Ark. Compositionally, I also borrowed from the Spanish master his dark ambience, silhouetted range (Anzac Hill) and foreground wedge of buffel grass, an environmental scourge.

ASCENSION FW19696 115 x 118cms 2016
Variously functional cars were gathering number at Whitegate Camp. One afternoon, a rival faction of the family who’d been arguing for months, waited until the place was vacated for the afternoon to enter and smash all windows of every car. When I was told about the damage done to the cars and asked if I’d photograph the damage to help with a report to the police I started thinking of a painting. Mark Tansey’s, Pleasure of the Text, came to mind. Edward Neal was happy to echo the pose of the driver in Tansey’s piece only I wanted Edward’s hands to express astonishment at the levitating, intact, or reborn, vehicle.

DEEP WATERS FW17697 113 x 95cms 2016
Narcissus was out hunting one day when Echo saw and fell in love with him. She followed him and talked with him. She had never seen anyone as beautiful and declared her love for him. When he rejected her she was broken hearted and disappeared leaving only her voice. Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, punished Narcissus by leading him to a pool in which he saw an image so beautiful he became enchanted and visited the pool daily to gaze at it. Ultimately, he realized that the image couldn’t love him or exist independently of his act of looking at it. His love was obsessive and unrequited. He was enthralled by a reflection, a reversed image he hadn’t seen before, not as he knew himself to be. The story of Narcissus has special appeal to realist artists and he has sometimes been regarded as the inventor of painting.

Renaissance theorist Albertis explained, ’What is painting but the act of embracing by means of art the surface of the pool?’ I’d considered alternate reflected images in the water. What would a contemporary Indigenous youth see? Perhaps a landscape at variance with that surrounding him? Possibly ghosted members of an earlier generation. I wanted to say something about the confusion confronting the present generation, the welter of imagery arriving through social media, the loss of language and relevance of much old story, the displacement from traditional ‘country’. When Jason Webb and I arrived at Wigley’s Waterhole where I’d planned the setting, recent rain had stirred the water and inadvertently, provided the answer. Jason’s reflection would be muddied.

SISYPHUS FW17698 130 x 125cms 2016
Maybe it was revisiting Camus’s, Last Man, which got me imaging Sisyphus. The Closing The Gap mantra provided the metaphor for the hero’s ceaseless rock-rolling to a mountaintop where it falls back on its own weight. I searched suitably scaled and colored rocks for Lachlan Webb to pitch his entire being against. As with all myths, new life needs to be breathed into them. Despite the persistent efforts to redress indigenous suffering none of us must submit to the Rock’s invincibility. Freeze-framing Sisyphus’s labour might enable contemplation of his torment. The struggle to ‘heights’ IS enough to fill our hearts, each atom of stone, each mineral flake of the night-filled mountain, forms a world.

FITNESS FW17701 79 x 119cms 2016
Friend and marathon devotee, Dr. Howard Goldenberg, regular participant in the Alice Springs annual marathon, posed for this (as Freud on the couch and a doctor listening to a rock rather than his patients in earlier works). I’d thought to contrast the disparate recreational pursuits of the cultures re-describing a moment that recurs regularly on the shared riverside path coursing from the CBD south to Heavitree Gap.

DISCOVERING THE GRIDDED CITY FW17702 82 x 120cms 2015
Without reviewing the history of settlement in Alice Springs since David Lindsay surveyed it in 1888, the town has grown on and about its original grid. It’s social problems are no secret and its persistent social divide, by and large of racial character, have been the subject of much of my work, not to mention regular airing in popular media and literature. In a work pre-dating this I’d pictured a similar group of Arrernte, the original custodians of Mpwernte/Alice Springs, bemused at discovering a rondel of casked wine in the dry riverbed of the Todd rather than the mythical inland sea, so desired by C19th explorers in search of mineral and grazing potential. Here, the very town itself is the unearthed object with its western grid, alien to the natural acreage surrounding it.

Courtesy of the Artist

ROD MOSS

Born: 1948 Ferntree Gully Victoria

EDUCATION

1995 Master of Visual Arts Monash Gippsland University College Documentation: Dwelling in Arrernte Country

1992 Monash Gippsland University Graduate Diploma Course Examination

1991 Exhibition of paintings and documentation of course work including Research Paper White Art Through White Gate

1974-78 Chisholm Institute Diploma of Art and Design (Painting)

EXHIBITIONS—SOLO

2017 Mirrors FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2016 The Origin of the New Poetics Anna Pappas Gallery Melbourne

2014 DRAWN FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2014 Layered & Burnished Nevada State Gallery Las Vegas

2014 Whitegate_Where Art and Life Collide Burrinja Gallery Upwey

2013 One Thousand Cuts Anna Pappas Gallery Melbourne

2013 Anatomy Lesson: You.Me.Us Araluen Cultural Centre Alice Springs

2012 Mirror FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2011 Mirror Anna Pappas Gallery Melbourne

2010 Déjà vu: The Hard Light of Day FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2010 Hard Light of Day Peta Appleyard Gallery Alice Springs

2009 Agony in the Garden The Diagnosis of Dr Goldenberg Anna Pappas Gallery Melbourne

2008 Intervention FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2008 Art at The Heart Regional Conference Convention Centre Alice Springs

2007 The Heart of the Matter City Lending library Melbourne

2007 Even As We Speak Uber Gallery Melbourne

2005 The Hard Light of Day FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2004 Big Country Small Histories ARC1 @ Span Flinders Lane Melbourne

2000 Once Upon a Time in the Centre FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

1999 Whitegate Mob Kluge-Ruhe Foundation Charlottesville VA

1999 Outback Art Columbus State University Columbus Georgia

1998 Where Do You Come From Brother Boy? Araluen Alice Springs

1998 Where Do You Come From Brother Boy? Fireworks Brisbane

1997 Rocks & Hard Places Prospect Gallery Adelaide

1997 Rocks & Hard Places Port Nourlunga Arts Centre SA

1996 Pushing Up River FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

1995 Dwelling in Arrernte Country Araluen Alice Springs

1995 Dwelling in Arrernte Country Fireworks Brisbane

1995 Dwelling in Arrernte Country Switchback Gallery Gippsland

1995 Territorial Bodies Tin Sheds Sydney

1994 Rod Moss Paintings Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi Melbourne

1994 Rod Moss Paintings FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

1993 Smack Daub in the Middle The Residency Alice Springs

1992 Territory Perspective's Artist of the Month April Development House Darwin

1992 24-Hour Contemporary Art Space Darwin

1992 Stuart Gerstman Galleries Melbourne

1990 Showcase Gallery Darwin

1990 Stuart Gerstman Galleries Melbourne

1990 The Araluen Centre Alice Springs

1987 Greenhill Galleries Adelaide

1986 Hogarth Galleries Sydney

1984 Manuka Galleries Canberra

1983 Profile Gallery Melbourne

1978 Hawthorn City Art Gallery Melbourne

EXHIBITIONS—GROUP (SELECTED)

2016 Black, White & Restive Newcastle Art Gallery NSW

2016 For The Birds Framed Gallery Darwin

2015 Redlands Art Award Sydney

2014 Layered & Burnished Nevada State University Nevada

2012 Art of the Nomad Chan Contemporary Art Space Darwin

2006 The Sound Of The Sky 200 years of non-indigenous visual response to the NT Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory Darwin

2005 Seeing The Other Kluge-Ruhe Foundation Charlottesville VA

2005 Alice Spring's Artist's Survey Show Araluen Cultural Centre Alice Springs

2005 The Dark & The Light III FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2004 Contemporary Australian ART Ian Potter National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne

2003 People FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2003 True Blue Framed Gallery Darwin

1999 Big Smoke Coo-ee Gallery Sydney

1996 Wijay Na 24 Hr Art Darwin

1996 Eyes on the Ball Waverly City Gallery (Curator Chris McAuliffe)then Touring '97)

1996 Sub-Urban Fremantle Arts Centre (Curator Thelma John)

1994 Contemporary Territory (Curator Dawn Mendham)

1994 Faces and Figures The Araluen Centre (Curator Alison French)

1992 Graduate Exhibition Monash University College Gippsland Latrobe Valley Arts Centre Commercial Road Morwell

1991 National Students Show Royal Exhibition Building Melbourne Melbourne

1990 Balance 1990 Queensland Art Gallery Brisbane

1990 Australian Contemporary Art Fair Royal Exhibition Buildings Melbourne

1990 Outback Originals Outback Gallery Boulder Colorado

1989 One Country Two Views The Araluen Centre (Curator Joanne Boniface)

1988 Fletcher Jones Invitation Warrnambool Regional Art Gallery Warrnambool

AWARDS

2014 Chief Ministers NT Book of the Year Award A Thousand Cuts

2013 Centralian Advocate Art Award Winner

2011 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction Australia

2002 Tennant Creek Art Award Nothern Territory

2001 Tammy Kingsley Award Alice Springs

2001 Alice Prize - Highly Commended Alice Springs

1998 Outback Art Award Broken Hill

1992 Professional Development Grant Australia Council for the Arts

1991 Painting and Residency Prize: Inaugural National Student Art and Design Exhibition Royal Exhibition Building Melbourne

1984-2008 Since 1984 the artist has won or been acquired for the various awards in the Alice Springs region: the Alice Prize the Tennant Creek Prize the Centralian Advocate Prize and the Northern Territory Art Award In 1998 he won the Broken Hill Outback Art Award In 1999 he accepted a residency there as part of the prize having earlier in the year accepted a residency at Columbus State University Georgia and followed his exhibition there with an exhibition at the Kluge Ruhe Foundation University of Virginia Charlottesville VA

PUBLISHED ESSAYS

2008 Big Country Small Histories Imagine Alice PP16-20

2008 Henry Smiths’ Big Trees Exhibition notes at Araluen

2007 Even As We Speak Arena Mag no87

2005 Stumbling Into Dreamtime Arena Mag No79 Oct/Nov PP 44-45

2003 Hunting On The Sabbath Overlander Spring issue no 72 PP70-72

2002 Sacred Space Henry Smith’s exhibition at Araluen (Catalogue notes)

1997 Elegy UTS Magazine November

1996 Northern Territory Government 1997 September (Calendar )

1996 Transcendental Landscape Revisited Oz Arts Issue No 13

1996 Towards a Realism at Wijay Na? NT Museum (Conference Paper)

1995 The Stones Just Keep on Coming Barking Dogs p7

1994 Scottish Narratives of the Centre Oz Arts Issue No11

1993 Only Yesterday Oz Arts Issue No5 p60

1993 John anderson The Figurative Tradition Mornington Regional Gallery (Catalogue)

1992 On the East Side of Alice's Face Catalogue essay 24-Hour Art Darwin

1992 A Softer Blanket of Ruin — 1985-92 Catalogue essay Stuart Gerstman gallery

1992 Catalogue essay Graduate Exhibition Latrobe Valley Arts Centre Morwell

1992 Interview with Mandy Martin in Periphery

1990 b1990: Views Visions Influences Catalogue notes Queensland Gallery

1988 Catalogue essay Fletcher Jones’ Invitation Warnambool Regional Art Gallery

1987 Catalogue essay Warwick Armstrong's Survey Show Devise Gallery

1987 Cover Art for Tim Rowse’s Indigenous Futures & Micky Dewar’s Never Never (survey of Territory Literature) Will Dobby’s music cassette This Piece of Dirt

PUBLISHED MATERIAL

2017 The Hard Light of Day Skyhorse Publishing New York

2017 Reason & Lovelessness Barry Hall

2017 Extraterritorial Glitch: Anti-Telluric Spectrality and Hyperspatial Wandjina Astarte Rowe Art & Australia Issue One: Extraterritoriality Victorian College of Art

2014 Le Monde La Vie 20-21 Sept

2014 One Thousand Cuts, Rod Moss

2010 The Hard Light of Day, Rod Moss

2007 Myths Stereotypes and Nationalism in Australian Visual Culture Traudi Allen MacMillan

2006 The Sound of the Sky Daena Murray pp185-194

2006 Cover for Globalism Institute RMIT

2005 Sylvia Kleinert & Rex Butler's catalogue essays for The Hard Light Of Day FireWorks Gallery Brisbane

2005 Naked In Alice Barry Hill Arena Magazine no 75pp36-38 (Front & Rear Covers)

2005 Crash Sites Sylvia kleinert Artlink vol 25 no 2 pp30-35

2004 The MakersJulia Copeland July 23rd on Radio Nationa

2004 Art Almanace June p49

2004 The Colour of Rupture Robert Nelson The Age June 30th

2004 The White Gaze on Aborigines The Age July 3rd

2004 Rod Moss’s Royal Portraits Rex Butler Australian Art Collector 28 pp98-101

2004 Catalogue 2004 p33 & p173

2004 Dancing on the Edge of the Abyss Rex Butler catalogue notes for Arc 1 show

2003 Working Backwards Daena Murray Conference paper Art Gallery of Western Australia

2002 This is not an Aborigine Rex Butler Paper for NSWG Art Historian’s Conference Dec 6-7

2001 The Hottest Gallery in the World p45

2000 Cultural Insight Brisbane News Phil Brown

2001 Once upon a Time in the Centre Eyeline Summer Edition P44 Alison Lee

1999 Artist breaks New Ground Kelly Chapman Columbus Ledger-Enquirer Georgia

1998 John Morton The Horses Mouth Museum of Victoria publication

1998 Them & Us Cuts Both Ways Kieran Finnane Alice Springs News

1998 Art Monthly April

1997 Many Rivers To Cross Stephanie Radock Adelaide Review

1997 Saltwater Freshwater Borewater pp 12-14 Campfire group

1996 Central Psyche Kieran Finnane Art in Australia Vol34 PP40-4

1996 Peripheral Visions Charles Green P130

1996 Black & White Art Mick Paskos Fremantle Gazette 12th July

1996 Wijay Na? Daene Murray Art Monthly No 92 August

1996 Radio National Arts Interview with Martin Portus & Peter Adsett

1996 Wijay Na Suzanne Spunner Real Time July/August

1996 Wijay Na? Papers Pp34-38 24Hr Art ed Jackie Wurm

1995 Territory Picture Show catalogue article Dawn Mendham

1995 Brush Power John McDonald SMH 21 Oct Spectrum 15

1995 Who's Who of Australian Visual Arts Thorpe P220

1995 Contemporary Territory Maurice O'Riordan Eyeline 25 P46

1994 Contemporary Territory Dawn Mendham Catalogue

1994 Rethinking Regionalism Terry Smith Art in Australia

1993 Art in Australia Vol 30 N3 Autumn p 386

1992 Gallery Scene Rebecca Lancashire Sunday Age 16 april p26

1992 Gotham City Gossip 3RRR interview with Roger Taylor

1991 Isolation Art Rosalinde Reines Mode August p81

1990 Choice of three styles Dr June Kane NT News 10 April

1990 Purity Calls may Be Paternalistic John McDonald Sydney Morning Herald 10 March

1983 Art in Australia Vol 20 N 3 Autumn p395

COLLECTIONS

Private collections Australia wide including Alice Springs, Darwin, Sydney & Melbourne

The Howard Black Collection Sydney University Union

Northern Territory Museum of Arts & Sciences Darwin

Anglicare Darwin

Alice Art Foundation The Araluen Centre Alice Springs

Artbank Sydney

BHP Billinton Melbourne

Alice Art Society The Araluen Centre Alice Springs

Charles Darwin University

Tennant Creek Civic Centre

Queensland Art Gallery

Moree Plains Regional Art Gallery

Newcastle Gallery

Burrinja Art Gallery Victoria

Parliament House Canberra

Alice Art Society The Araluen Centre Alice Springs

State Library Melbourne

City Lending Library Melbourne

Alice Springs Centrelink Building

Prospect Council Chambers Adelaide

Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery

Kluge Rhue Foundation University of Virginia USA

Columbus State University Georgia USA

Wooloongong University NSW

Unviversity of Queensland QLD

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