Brian Osborne, Landscape 6 (after a photo by John Flannagan) (detail), 2022. Oil on canvas, 102 x 102cm. Courtesy: the artist and Boroondara Arts, Melbourne.

Nowhere to Here by Brian Osborne is a community exhibition examining the impact of bushfires on the Australian landscape, communities, and in collective memory.

Like many Victorians, Osborne was affected by the Ash Wednesday and the Black Saturday fires. Osborne processed the devastation of these disasters through his art, capturing the path and evolution of the scorched Australian landscape. Osborne’s abstracted, large-scale paintings track the barren, burnt orange earth as it begins to bear new growth after unimaginable destruction.

This exhibition demonstrates the regenerative nature of the burnt landscape, both as documentation and as a visual metaphor for the lives still being rebuilt after unthinkable hardship. As life re-births from the ashes, it begs the question, ‘where to now from here?’

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