Basalt Temple is a rock formation at Falls Creek in the Victorian Alps of Australia. It is a three-hour walk across the Bogong High Plains from Pretty Valley Pondage, and consists of an enormous pile of weathered hexagonal basalt columns. There are many variations of these hexagonal basalt outcrops in the area, and in fact can be found all over the world including Ireland Mexico and China.

 

David H Thomas has spent 15 years travelling to the area, where he runs the annual Falls Creek Artist Camp. In this time he has revisited these sites many times, drawing, photographing, and documenting them.

 

Over a decade, he has produced a series of oil paintings and ink drawings on this theme, the artworks slowly accumulating and changing, almost an allusion to geological time, stillness and eternity, a kind of ‘slow food’.

 

Referencing erosion, decay, deconstruction, time, patterns and geometry, these singular visions of the monolith draw on ancient ruins like Aztec Pyramids, Babel, and Zoroastrian Towers, as well as the architecture of Gaudi, the sculpture of Inge King and Sci-Fi writers from Ray Bradbury to Arthur C Clarke, the mystical journeys of man and nature, all under the atmosphere of the Australian Alpine light.

 

An artist book, Basalt Temple, containing drawings, illustrations, paintings and photographs of source material, has been specially commissioned to coincide with the exhibition and is available at William Mora Gallery.