Julia Roche: Under A Winter Moon

Julia Roche is a local artist based on Wiradjuri country. Her landscape paintings were completed by leaving canvases outdoors, inviting environmental elements such as mist, rain, sunlight, and debris to become imprinted onto her works.

Splitting her time between a repurposed woolshed studio on her family’s farm ‘Wooroola’ near Mangoplah and the regenerative farm ‘Bibbaringa’ at Bowna, Roche created the new series of work Under a Winter Moon on large-scale canvas and sheets of rag paper, using found objects and materials from both properties.

Venturing out into the winter elements with only moonlight to guide her gesture and palette, allowed Roche the opportunity to solely focus on what she felt in the environment. Using materials such as natural charcoal and pastels, Roche relied on the motion of her own body, mark making large-scale landscapes in response to the shadows, silhouettes, and textures around her.

This visceral collaboration with the environment meant each work in this series served a time and site-specific record of the natural world. Pattered with subtle motifs and mark-making, Roche challenged our understanding of painting landscapes and encouraged us to work more closely in and with our surrounding environment.