'Wild Silence 1', David Charles Collins, 2016

Curated for FORM.

David Charles Collins established his art practice in Perth before moving to Sydney in 2015. Over recent years he has gained growing national attention for his richly sensual photographic and video works, which reference the aesthetics of high-Renaissance painting to critically comment upon the hedonism, decadence and apathy of his generation.

In 2016 FORM commissioned Collins to travel to Western Australia’s remote southern regions and create a new body of botanically-themed works in conjunction with the Ravensthorpe Wildflower Festival. His resulting photographic series, Wild Silence, documents the iconic orchids of the Fitzgerald Biosphere, an area of nationally-significant biodiversity at the border of the Great Southern and Goldfields-Esperance regions.

“Each photograph is an abstracted portrait,” Collins explains, “the flowers, initially hard to see and find, still carried the weight and history of the place in which they had quietly existed. Becoming more than flowers, I conceptualized them as individuals in a community, all tacitly aware of the knowledge of the land they inhabited. I found these silent bodies heavy with the secrets they keep to themselves”. In striking contrast to the high-baroque sensibility of Collins’ previous works, the images have a stark and minimal beauty, representing a new direction in his practice.

Image:Wild Silence 1, Giclee fine art print on smooth pearl paper, 110 x 110 cm, 2016. Image c/o David Charles Collins.

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