The Art Journal
Under the Weather: When a Photograph Waits to Be Understood
Sometimes an artwork waits. It sits quietly in the archive, unnoticed, or perhaps only partially understood, until something shifts — not in the work, but in you. Ralph Kerle, “Under the Weather” (77 × 100 cm) Signed Limited Edition 1 of 10 [/caption] I came across Under the Weather again recently, a photograph I made in September 2013 at 6.45 in the morning. At the time, I was beginning to explore reflections more seriously, drawn to their instability, their refusal to hold the world in place. Looking at it now, I’m struck by how complete the idea already was. The boats are there, the rigging, the marina — all the familiar structures of a coastal environment. And yet, nothing quite holds. The verticals waver, the forms dissolve, the image slips away from description. It is not just a reflection. It is a negotiation with perception. What interests me now is how naturally the image enters a psychological space. It does not feel constructed or forced. Instead, it feels like something discovered — a moment where the world briefly revealed its instability. The title, Under the Weather, carries a certain lightness, even humour. But it also suggests unease, a quiet dislocation. To be “under the weather” is to feel slightly removed from oneself, not entirely anchored. Perhaps that is what the image holds. Not a place, but a state.
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On The Way to Bluedom Longlisted in the 2025 Booooooom Photo Awards
On the Way To Bluedom, 100 x 123cm, Museum Quality Giclee Print on Hahnemuehle German Etching Rag 310gsm [/caption] I’m very pleased to share that my artwork On The Way to Bluedom was selected in the longlist of the 2025 Booooooom Photo Awards. It is always encouraging when a work finds resonance beyond the studio, beyond the website, and beyond the immediate circle of people who already know what I do. This recognition feels particularly meaningful because Booooooom has, over many years, become a highly visible international platform for contemporary art and photography. Founded in 2008 by Vancouver artist Jeff Hamada, it describes itself as Canada’s highest-traffic art platform and as an authoritative voice in contemporary art that has helped bring emerging artists to international attention. The scale of this year’s awards also gives the longlisting real weight. On its 2025 Photo Awards page, Booooooom says that the 200 longlisted images were selected from record submissions comprising nearly 20,000 photographs. To have On The Way to Bluedom included in that field is something I’m genuinely proud of. What especially pleases me about this recognition is that On The Way to Bluedom was selected in the Colour category. Colour is at the heart of this work. The blue is not incidental to the image; it is the image’s force, vitality and emotional charge. It gives the work its movement, luminosity and sense of life. I titled the work On The Way to Bluedom because “Bluedom” felt to me like a destination that could never fully be reached. It keeps changing, just as the artwork keeps changing each time I look at it. The image seems to ask me to keep searching a little more for blue, as though blue were not simply a colour, but a place of feeling and possibility. What matters to me in that title is its double edge. Bluedom is not only a place of calm. Blue can suggest darkness, distance and melancholy, but it can also suggest coolness, release, spaciousness and a lessening of stress. Perhaps that is the real force of the work: that it moves between those states, carrying both tension and relief at once. That is why it feels so right to see the work recognised in the Colour category. The blue does more than describe what is there. It transforms the image and keeps asking something of me each time I return to it. I’m grateful to Director Levi Unrau and the 2025 Booooooom team of judges for including the work in this year’s longlist, and very pleased to see it recognised in a category that speaks so directly to the quality that drives it most strongly.
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Encountering the Human: Ron Mueck at the Art Gallery of NSW
Today I experienced something rare. I encountered work that blurred the boundary between object and being. It is not often that I am left completely in awe of an artist — whether visual, multimedia, sculptural, or immersive. Yet walking through Encounters at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, seeing the work of Australian sculptor Ron Mueck, I found myself profoundly moved. The title of the exhibition — Encounters — is precise. This is not a passive viewing experience. It is not simply an exhibition of objects. It is an encounter in the truest sense: a meeting between bodies in space. Between the viewer and the viewed. Between the living and the seemingly living. There is something about sculpture that has always fascinated me. Unlike two-dimensional wall works, sculpture occupies space as we do. It exists in our realm. You walk around it. You approach it. You retreat from it. You experience it from multiple angles, much like walking around a tree, wandering through a garden, or navigating a labyrinth. The act of viewing becomes physical. Embodied. In that sense, sculpture feels sentient. Mueck’s sculptures are entirely rooted in humanity — in the human figure, in human vulnerability, in the subtle language of the body. Standing before these works — whether monumental in scale or startlingly intimate — I felt something uncanny. They seem human. Possibly human. They appear as though they might breathe. They seem to stare back. Most of all, they radiate emotion. To capture such emotional intensity in three-dimensional form is, to me, magical. The attention to detail is extraordinary. Every toe, every wrinkle, every vein, every eyelid. Nothing is overlooked. It doesn’t matter whether the sculpture is colossal or miniature — the precision remains absolute. Yet it is not mere technical mastery that holds me. It is the presence. These figures do not feel constructed. They feel formed. I found myself wondering what it must be like inside Mueck’s mind while he works. How does such a figure take shape? It almost feels embryonic — as though from the smallest beginning, through time and attention, something gathers substance, structure, and finally, emotion. Not only does the body emerge, but the psyche seems to arrive fully formed. This is where the exhibition connects deeply to my own ongoing inquiry into perception. We make sense of the world primarily through vision. As Eric Kandel describes through the idea of unconscious inference, we are not passively recording reality; we are actively constructing it. The brain fills in gaps. It predicts. It projects. It completes. Standing before Mueck’s sculptures, I became acutely aware of this process. I know intellectually that these are inert materials — silicone, resin, pigment. Yet my mind insists they are alive. My nervous system responds as if in the presence of another human being. I adjust my distance. I soften my gaze. I feel watched. The encounter is psychological as much as physical. What Mueck achieves is extraordinary because he activates this unconscious mechanism so completely. The sculptures sit on the threshold between object and being. They are not moving, yet they feel as though they could. They are silent, yet they carry internal narrative. And this is where I felt the most profound connection to my own practice. In my photographic work, I am also working with perception. With surface. With what appears and what is inferred. Water reflections, abstraction, pareidolia — these are all invitations for the viewer’s mind to complete what is not fully there. The image becomes alive not because of what I impose upon it, but because of what the viewer brings. Mueck’s sculptures operate differently in medium, yet similarly in mechanism. He gives us the human form with such precision that our minds cannot resist completing the illusion of life. The beholder’s stake becomes everything. The sculptures are not merely representations of people. They feel as though they contain lived experience. They hold silence, tension, introspection, vulnerability. And standing before them, I was not simply looking — I was being looked at. That reciprocity is powerful. Speaking with the gallery guides, it seems many visitors experience the works as “living.” The atmosphere shifts around them. Time slows. The room holds its breath. For me, Ron Mueck stands as one of the most inspirational contemporary artists I have encountered. His practice is both monumental and intimate, technical and mysterious. It reveals how art and the mind converge — how material, imagination, observation, and emotional intelligence fuse into something iconic. I know I will return to this exhibition. Not simply to see the sculptures again, but to stand before them and feel that charged moment of encounter — that space where perception, emotion, and embodiment meet. And perhaps, in that meeting, understand a little more about how art comes to life — and how we, as viewers, complete it.
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The Future of Brightness
The Future of Brightness connects with everything I perceive uniquely Australian in my cultural subconscious. The artwork suggests the rich ochres on which our ancient land is built and from which the culture of our indigenous peoples created their dreamtime stories. It pushes into the vast unknowable horizons we live with on a daily basis. The inspiration for the creation of this artwork came from a series of works by Australian artist Tim Storrier in the 1980s and 1990s entitled ‘the Fire Lines” and “the Blaze Lines”. Storrier grew up in the Australian countryside fascinated by the colour and light of the vast horizons, the sunsets and the bushfires he experienced in this environment. To help him vision the artwork he wanted to create, he photographed using an old Box Brownie a line of burning kerosene on the ground. The kerosene was unreliable and whilst experimenting with other flammable material discovered burning boat lacquer produced the best photographic representation of fire. Hence an unintended connection between The Future of Brightness and the influence of Storrier’s work is the way the boat lacquer, either on fire on the ground in Storrier’s case or coated on the hull of yacht with strong sunlight shining on it in my work, facilitates unique visions of the Australian outback. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1500"] The Future of Brightness 106 x 160cm Fine Art Print on museum quality archival paper [/caption] An insightful story Storrier tells is of a meeting in the 1980s in Melbourne with a 92 year old gentleman who had travelled by steamer from Sydney to Melbourne. After seeing Storrier’s work, he remarked on how it reminded him of the lines of fire created by the Aboriginal peoples of southern New South Wales observable from the deck of the vessel at sea. The more I worked on the Future of Brightness, the more I felt confident I had created an artwork that distilled an imaginary vision of the Australian outback, its natural vagaries and its aesthetic beauty consistent with the current climate conditions. The irony of the title Future of Brightness is intended. Read it how you like!!. View available editions, sizes, prices and to purchase the Future of Brightness
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Introducing Indra Wills, Gallery Manager, Ralph Kerle Gallery
My new Gallery Manager, Indra Wills is a graduate of the National Art School, Sydney, majoring in ceramics, and has been accepted into the University of Sydney to do a Masters in Art Curation. I’m delighted to be working with her. Oh! She had a day off yesterday to continue development of her skills in a domain she has also been operating in for some time. She was disappointed as she only reached 250kph in practice!
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Announcing Sydney Eye Hospital Foundation Sponsor Partnership
I am delighted to announce I am now an official sponsor partner of the Sydney Eye Hospital Foundation. The Sydney Eye Hospital along with the Melbourne Eye Hospital have been world leading eye and patient care institutions for a long long time. Indeed the Australian eye health system is considered world leading and it is at these hospitals where the research, scientific development and practice is put into place at the front line.I can't tell you how much the doctors at the Sydney Eye Hospital have been there for me when I have needed their help! In the 1980s, they gave me back my sight. I am discussing various ways with Linda Fagan, the CEO of the Foundation about how I might be able to assist in raising general public awareness about this wonderful institution and its services so please stay tuned. in the meantime,, I have elected to donate a percentage of every sale made through my auctions.
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Van Gogh Live, His Street and His House
A photo essay from Van Gogh Live Experience (c) Ralph Kerle As a former creator of immersive experiences in the early 1980s, when large scale non site-specific installations were beginning to emerge; it was an absolute delight to experience installation arts’ 40 year evolution, at the Van Gogh Alive Experience, currently on exhibit at the Royal Hall of Industries, Moore Park, Sydney, ‘Immersive live experiences’ or, ‘happening’s’ as they were called in the 1960s and 70s, attempted to break away from the restrictions of traditional galleries, museums or theatres, with their ongoing overheads of permanent programming and marketing required to keep these institutions operating. Now without these constraints and the advent of affordable high end portable technology, live experience designers and curators can dream big, with individual concepts on a low risk, one off basis. Events of this nature can be designed for global portability so all that is temporarily needed is a big open shed – a modern day conference centre or marquee. These types of experiences are the future of cultural events in 21st Century. The Van Gogh Alive Experience takes you into the life and art of Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch painter some consider the greatest painter of the modern era. The 45 minute narrative is constructed around 7 periods in his life’s journey – called movements. Each movement involves large scale projections of his artworks, some are collaged and interspersed with close up sections of individual works. Selected writings from his famous collection of letters appear throughout the experience, acting as though Van Gogh is narrating the experience himself. The whole visual experience is underpinned by a musical soundtrack of classical pieces composed during his life, and lit with faint smells of spices, fresh gardens and sandalwood. You can’t help but feel dwarfed by the sights and sounds of the experience. The immersion is profound on many levels – Van Gogh’s technique, colour palette and his self-portraits reveal his inner struggle in a way that is pure emotion and a cerebral delight. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500"] Vincent’s Street,110 x 300cm Created 2nd April, 2019, Aveiro Portugal. [/caption] Perhaps the best way to sum up the presentation is to use Van Gogh’s own words; “As a suffering creature, a painter, I cannot do without something greater than I – something that is my life – the power to create….” I sensed I was in the living presence of a creative genius. Van Gogh’s creational power drives this exhibition, and I cannot help but feel I am a guest in his presence. On my 2018 trip to Aveiro, Portugal, I was walking down a windy alley in Cais dos Mercanteis, which led to the local fish market. My eye was immediately caught by a yellow house perched within a row of houses on the side of the canal. The house invoked the spirit of Van Gogh and his work whilst he lived in Arles. I knew that if the surface remained still on the water in the canal, I might be able to capture a shot that paid proper homage to Van Gogh’s creative influence on my thinking and work. The weather held, the camera spoke and when I downloaded the shots to view them, there was no doubt in my mind what the titles had to be: “Vincent’s Street” and “Vincent’s House”. Van Gogh focused on colour, nature and form to build his understanding of the world around him. His work has an immense impact on the way I conceive my artwork. Clearly, the creators of Van Gogh Alive. were similarly inspired. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2048"] Vincent’s House in situ [/caption] [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2500"] Vincent’s House 94 x 140 cm Aveiro Portugal [/caption]
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Conversations We Don't Have
Alan Pentland is a long time friend and colleague from Melbourne, Australia. He qualified as an architect but ended up a prize winning writer, comedian, poet and performer. Many Australians will recall one of Australia's most memorable comedy characters Ferret from the ground-breaking 90's TV comedy show "Fast Forward". That was my mate, Alan and he created the character! Alan is a Melbourne Spoken Word poetry champion. When I asked him whether he might be interested in collaborating with me on a book, putting some words in a poetic form to my artworks, he kindly agreed if I would buy his idea - "poetry to stimulate realistic and positive discussions, on topics we often avoid". I loved the idea and immediately provided him with 10 artworks designed to stimulate his creative poetry juices. Under a tentative book title "Conversations We Don't Have" we offer our first collaboration. The artwork is Sea Dunes, for Alan Pentland the poet, it transformed into Memory Machine Memory Machine My mind runs on memories it’s a memory machine second-guessing the future based on things that have been. All that is certain all that has last all that we know comes from the past. It’s all about memory inside my head knowledge, talent, family and friends old and the new jumbled and sorted sometimes it’s chaos sometimes it’s ordered. Sometimes it’s love where memory gets set. I’d love to love more but sometimes forget.
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