Avalanche

Set in the ancient, dramatic Targangal (Mt Kosciuszko) region of the Australian Alps, Avalanche explores the unfamiliar psychological terrain of a world disrupted by pandemic and confronted by the intensifying impacts of global warming. The rapid escalation and compression of climate and COVID-19 related events – for Australia and the world – are forcing a rethink of how we live in, and with, the natural environment. Australia’s devastating 2020 Black Summer of bushfires, which immediately preceded the onset of the pandemic, had a significant impact upon the landscape and our sense of security and identity. This series reflects upon our sense of disorientation, the shock of disruption to our status quo – and the fragility and transience of what we often take for granted. Drawn from an ongoing project of photographic exploration in and around the Snowy Mountains, Ngarigo country, a part of Australia with an extraordinary and unique yet highly vulnerable alpine ecosystem, Avalanche invites reflection upon accepted notions of progress, the contradictions and existential challenges of the Anthropocene, human agency, legacy, choice and consequence.