Between Fire and Flood

At the heart of Troy Ruffels’ photographic work there also resides a response to the Tasmanian environment – specifically the climate of the North West landscape. Ruffels observes: ‘In the studio, and in the 12-month development of the exhibition, my focus often shifted to the use, qualities and attributes of light and emotive tone, and how, through finding visual equivalents for often elusive states, I could translate the qualities of harmony and discord, weight and gravity, solace and conflict, and the poetics of human endeavour into visual form.’ The emotive power Ruffels’ work communicates can be likened to seasonal changes where physical shifts in nature can trigger moods as far ranging as joy to melancholy. In a series of photographic works that appear as multiple reflections shimmering on aluminum supports, Between Fire and Flood balances counter-emotive states with those of nature – loss, growth and change. I congratulate Troy on presenting an exhibition that poetically represents the complexities of internal and external states of being where mind and nature coalesce.