VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA.-Originally from Melbourne, painter Rod Moss has spent the past twenty years in the desert regions of Central Australia, where his friends and neighbours are Eastern Arrernte Aboriginal families living in extreme poverty. The relationships he has formed with these people, the Hayes, Neals, Johnson and Ryder families in particular, have on 20 September and running until 28 October, 2007.

Moss begins each painting in black and white, allowing the big rhythms and light play to dictate the fields of intensity and hue into which he then moves. The indigenous figures are worked in graphite and all remaining elements painted in the luminous palette of the desert. The resultant paintings are unromantic and often confronting. They describe actual events and fabrications, sometimes using the works of earlier realists as leverage, but always acknowledging the shared humanity of Australia. All are based on Moss’s personal connections with the Eastern Arrernte people, encounters which have ranged through “humour, gentleness, [and] togetherness” to “gross dysfunctions caused by displacement, domination and lack of dignity”.

In his introduction to the catalogue for “Even As We Speak”, Philip Batty, writes: “Life is grim in the town camps of Alice Springs and is, indeed, a 'national disgrace' as the Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson recently declared. Yet, Moss's warm relationship with the Aboriginal inhabitants of these 'hell holes', and his unrelenting campaign to present their life in all its horror, incongruity and humour, offers some hope that things might improve.”

�ber Gallery is committed to ‘art unlimited’; that is, art without borders of any kind. The gallery represents and exhibits the work of established Australian and international artists actively contributing to contemporary art discourse and promotes the work of gifted emerging artists who possess the potential to do the same. �ber Gallery is an ACGA member.