National Gallery of Victoria

“They are literally pictures of nothing, but nothing has never looked so good” – Art Critic John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald 19th February 2006.

Between the years of 2003 and 2010, Murray Fredericks made sixteen solo journeys to the featureless surface of Lake Eyre, a usually dry salt pan in the Australian Outback. Immersed in ‘pure space’, Fredericks camped alone in the centre of the lake photographing a ‘landscape without landscape’ for up to five weeks at a time. The solitude, simplicity and repetition of the days, created an approach that was integral to the production of the images.

The photographs were produced on a traditional 8mm x 10mm film plate camera and exhibited as large digital pigment prints on cotton rag. There have been many solo and group shows from the series, including at Hamiltons Gallery in London, Arc 1 Gallery in Melbourne, the Louvre as part of Paris Photo, Eastlink Gallery in Shanghai and numerous public spaces around Australia.

The work now resides in major public and private collections internationally and was recently shown at the National Gallery of Victoria as part of a major survey show of contemporary.