Land of Vision and Mirage: Western Australia since 1826
UWAP, $34.95 pb, 270 pp
Under the apple tree
Scattered across Lake Ballard, a vast salt lake north of Kalgoorlie, are fifty-one androgynous abstracted cast-iron alloy figures created by British artist Antony Gormley in 2002, all based on scans of the inhabitants of a tiny goldfields settlement. Gormley described his figures as ‘strangers in a strange land’. It is not too wild a stretch of the imagination to see them as explorers or prospectors driven by powerful dreams to wander endlessly across a shimmering landscape. One of these figures provides an evocative cover image for Land of Vision and Mirage.
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