A General Map of Caves

Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor

by Andrew Frost

Of all the natural formations of the landscape few are as psychologically rich as the cave. Used for millennia as natural shelters by people around the world, the cave lays at the heart of human history, both as a site of cultural significance but also as an entry into an uncanny relationship with nature. Given its central role in ancient philosophy as a place where other worlds and states of being might be glimpsed, entry into the cave space has remained a hugely attractive idea for artists to explore, from Indigenous and Colonial artists to contemporary practitioners.

Exhibiting new and existing works by Locust Jones, Talitha Kennedy, Catherine O’Donnell and Kelly O’Dempsey and with a film by Matt Creswell and a performance by Tanya Vogues, A General Map of Caves tackles its subject as a metaphor, the artworks recording “…the vast and intimate territories and the physical and psychological spaces the [artists] have encountered” while treating the cave as “…a metaphor for the abyss […] and the map an invitation to the void in which the viewer is free to invest” themselves.