“Vivien Gaston’s waterfalls are landscapes of the mind as much as they are beautifully—and sometimes recognisably—topographic. She balances the psychological with the physical in this recent series of resonant paintings, evoking Earth’s deep time and the forces of nature on which all life depends. In a time of environmental crisis, human identification with the sublime power of water seems more urgent than ever before.”

—Jane Clark, Senior Research Curator, Mona (The Museum of Old and New Art), Hobart

As icons of the sublime, Waterfalls are revered as both symbols of life-giving replenishment and of the peril of water’s intensity. Climate Change only further deepens their significance. These works reclaim the image of Waterfalls, from that of the tourist’s postcard, to a more psychologically intense contemplation of nature.

In seeking to unveil intimate relationships between water and earth, Gaston creates an architecture of water, exploring hidden structures and abstract interplay with rocks, plants and sky. Waterfalls assert the importance of the sublime as an experience of awe, as metaphors of secular baptism and immersion in a world beyond the individual human perspective.