Judge's comments - Kurt Schranzer

This is one of the more intriguing paintings in the exhibition. Metaphysical in nature-partly surreal and partly neo-expressionist —the work has a sensibility reminiscent of German painters from the 1980s and 1990s, particularly Martin Kippenberger, Jörg Immendorff, and Georg Baselitz. There are resonances with the pop-cartoonish style of Philip Guston (also connected to neo-expressionism), who captured a sense of the "anxious and turbulent world he was witnessing."

From my perspective, there is a likewise fraught psychological dimension to this painting given its raw forms and strong colour. Of note is the complimentary use of yellow and violet in the columns, the reds chromatically energising the teals, ochres, siennas, and umbers of the landscape, and the block-like headland and sea foam contrasted with a serpentine pathway (or is it an ominous shadow?). I immediately thought of the Sea Cliff Bridge at the Illawarra escarpment, though if this is a reference it has been imagined as an unfinished monolith, absent of its soaring span sections.

As viewers, we are placed at ground level facing what could be the aerating roots of a mangrove or some cross-sectional rock pools and sea grasses. What do we make of the title Road for Fishes?... how do we decipher the work? Is it an ecological or environmental protestation about the collision between the natural and manmade world; or a more bitter-sweet statement about nature and the human condition; is it an expression of the artist's existential quandaries? It's a painting that made me 'question' its meanings, which is what Art often requires of us!