How did the major project Extreme Landforms come about?
A – I moved to Darwin in 1977 as part of the great influx just after Cyclone Tracy. Our task was to set up a new art school in this devastated town. I loved Darwin, having visited briefly in the Wet Season some years previously – here was a rich source of subject-matter to be explored, but it was all so different, and ten years would elapse before I knew enough to deal with it even passably well. Much of this period was also spent in exploring formal abstraction and conceptual art. A series of acrylic paintings of swimming pools at night, often with lightning, was the main outcome of this period. These benefited from the exploration of abstraction and used photography as a major tool, thus could be regarded as precursors to Extreme Landforms.The big change was that with a real income for the first time overseas travel became affordable. There were actual places out there that were even more extraordinary than the ones I had been inventing. So in the summer of 1982 I explored Iceland an
