Two Weeks in Chloride Street, Broken Hill 2011

In November 2010 I spent two weeks as resident artist at the studio in Chloride Street Broken Hill, as the guest of Broken Hill Regional Gallery.

Walking around the streets and lanes of the Silver City with their evocative chemical names, I was struck by the way in which the city seems to have evolved out of the landscape. For the twenty-five drawings I did on site and back in my studio I mainly used lead pencil, in order to reflect the city's mineral base of silver, lead, and zinc. In places the sketches were bleached out in order to show the way in which the desert light leaches colour from the environment.

A particular feature of Broken Hill that caught my eye was the sheds. The gaps in corrugated iron offered occasional windows into treasure troves: inside/outside views of the lives of the people of Silver City .

The works were shown at the Broken Hill Regional Gallery and at Watters Gallery, Sydney, in the 2011 exhibition Two Weeks in Chloride Street.