of skies tolerably large...

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: National Art Collections around the world have a responsibility to seek out and reveal new understandings of national culture and responses to place and the National Gallery of Australia is no exception. The exhibition Out of the West was a curatorial selection of work drawn from the National Gallery's collection of works that relate to the imaging and imagining of Western Australia and was the first such survey exhibition outside Western Australia. The first settlers of Western Australia were mesmerised by the light, heat and long horizons. Out of the West presents a selective exhibition of responses to these impetuses through a diverse range of media. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: Duxbury created Of skies tolerably large in response to her phenomenological engagement with the landscapes of Western Australia, the image representing the endlessness and breadth of the sky as a space for contemplation of the horizon and special light and the blind embossed text to indicate how words fail in the presence of such expanses. The text comes from a statement by the 19th century English artist John Constable when referring to the 50 large-scale studies of skies he had completed and relates to Duxbury's research interests in the work of Constable and contemporary renditions. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: Out of the West displayed Of skies tolerably large alongside the works of established early WA artists Robert Dale and AB Webb and significant contemporary artists Howard Taylor, Brian Blanchflower and James Angus. Of skies tolerably large combines image and text to reference art history, contemporary landscape and a sense of place. Its collection by the NGA along with state galleries such as AGNSW and AGWA and QUT museum is testament to its contribution to defining national and state culture and place.