Rod Berry's talk at Sally Stokes Opening: "Journey to the Interior"

It is a great thrill to be here. I have enjoyed meeting some of you today, and one thing which has stood out with everyone I have spoken to, is just how much regard and affection we all have for Sally’s work. Sally – there is a lot of love in the room! I am sure any one of us would have a lot of great things to say about Sally and her work, but I am delighted to be the one to speak on this occasion. I want to base some of my comments about Sally’s work today around the notion of serendipity. Serendipity is the occurrence of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. In simple terms, serendipity is about wonderful co-incidence. Serendipity started my journey with Sally and her work.

Quite by chance I wandered off the street into this gallery during the Lures of Landscapes exhibition in 2012, and Sally’s work immediately resonated with me. I felt mesmerised by the colour, the daring, the vitality, the shapes, the juxtapositions, and the energy. I became an immediate fan. As I chatted with Tony Scotland at the Lures exhibition, the sense of serendipity grew, as it turned out that Sally and I shared a common connection in the late Valerie Olsen. Valerie taught me to paint at Hornsby TAFE 20 years earlier. Remarkably, Sally and Tony had been close friends of Valerie before Valerie’s passing, and the paintings I was so enjoying had been painted in Valerie’s old studio. Talk about 6 degrees of separation! My office in Chatswood is now filled with Sally’s work. I cannot convey just what a thrill it is everyday to walk into my reception area, or to take a client into a conference room, and to have Sally’s work bringing such positive energy to the situation.

Serendipity is a word I would also use to describe Sally’s artwork itself. Sally’s paintings are full of wondrous co-incidences, delightful chance alignments, as she observes shapes and colours in nature. She juxtaposes geological formations millions of years old with ephemeral things such as clouds and birds and bushes. We witness deep ochres set against rich blue skies. Sally is an optimist, and this is reflected in her choice of palette. There is a delight and joy in Sally’s work, as she celebrates the wonder of our ancient land. By noticing serendipity in Sally’s work, I don’t mean to suggest for one moment that she is a casual observer of what she is painting. Sally’s artworks are the result of deep observation and reflection of the Australian landscape.

To produce the artworks we see today, Sally travelled approximately 24,000km. She took about 10,000 photos, and made innumerable sketches. Sally travelled extensively to remote and sacred places many of us will never visit, especially in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. We are very lucky that Sally has shared these postcards of Australia’s interior with us. But these paintings are more than mere records of what Sally saw; they also represent Sally’s emotional response with these places. I wonder the extent to which, for Sally, the Journey to the Interior represents not only a journey into Australia’s interior, but a journey of personal reflection – into her own spiritual interior.

What I see in the works we are viewing today is the outpouring of deep meditation, Sally having absorbed and internalised the energy and sacredness of the landscape. Sally has a quiet humility about her, but she has become a very powerful communicator of the awe that she feels in nature. One motif I have noticed in her more recent work is the arrival of birds. Are they part of the landscape? Or do they represent Sally and by extension us, as we fly over the landscape, experiencing great freedom as we survey the wondrous land which lies before us? Sally has done us a great favour by sharing with us her Journey to the Interior. I am delighted to officially open her exhibition. 

Reflections by Elizabeth Fortescue  Sally Stokes: Journey to the Interior: 2014

During the last three winters, Sally Stokes undertook journeys to more than a dozen of Australia’s most visually stunning and remote locations. In Western Australia, Stokes witnessed British artist Antony Gormley’s uncanny sculptures stalking across the white salt vastness of Lake Ballard. She was captivated by the stripy sandstone domes at Purnululu, and by the Tunnel Creek cave system which lies beneath the Napier Range. She visited the extraordinary stepped waterfall of Bell Gorge in the Kimberley, and the Wolfe Creek Crater whose mystical appearance gave rise to indigenous dreaming stories.

In the Northern Territory, Stokes visited the West Macdonnells near Ormiston. She saw the indigenous rock engravings of Ndhala Gorge and the rockpools of Hancock Gorge in Karijini National Park. At Gunlom Falls in Kakadu National Park, she stood on the rocks above the area’s famous 30-metre waterfall. There were other locations, as well. Together, they provided a deep well of inspiration which Stokes carried back to her studio in Dural, northwest of Sydney. With the visual impact of her travels fresh in her mind, and with photographs and sketchbooks as aides memoires, Stokes slowly and meditatively created the large suite of paintings from which this exhibition has been selected. It is so easy to find joy, spirituality and the love of life in all of Stokes’ paintings.

They exhale the sheer delight of the artist as she allows her extraordinary outback journey to permeate her entire being and to be reborn in these remarkable paintings which speak so eloquently of a life devoted to art. These paintings are not careful renderings of the Australian scenery — they are a visceral and heartfelt response in colour, line and texture to the never-ending gravity of the outback. Elizabeth Fortescue, Daily Telegraph visual arts writer, Australian correspondent for The Art Newspaper, www.artwriter.com.au