Mossenson Galleries are pleased to present the first Melbourne solo exhibition from this award winning Western Australian artist. The exhibition will be opened from 6-8pm on Tuesday 2 June 2009. The artist will be present for the opening.

In 2008 the artist Katherine Hall joined the transitory workforce of Western Australia's booming mining industry. The experience exposed her to a new landscape, where rigs, cranes, platforms and drills punctuated the red horizon.Her travels also introduced her to the Indigenous people of the Kimberley, with whom she worked in residencies at Waringarri and Warmun art centres. They shared with her their ochres and oxides, and instilled in Hall deep questions of ownership and difference.

Katherine Hall does not call her works paintings, but rather, she refers to them as drawings. According to Hall, each canvas is a building block, part of a unifying process of drawing together, building towards a better understanding of life in contemporary Australia. The canvas becomes a site for construction, a symbol of the individual and their integral role in the creation of society's greater whole. More pertinently, each canvas reflects Hall's personal journey.

Katherine Hall was born in 1961 on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. At 18 months, Hall and her family left the tiny island, never to return, and the artist spent her formative years in Perth, Western Australia. She recalls her childhood memories in Western Australia, shaped by camping trips in the sweeping bush-land. As we grew, it [the landscape] became a part of us, our memories, our idea of beauty, part of our identity. The land, the nature became a place of refuge in times of need, a place of quiet reflection, a coming home.

In 2008, Hall joined the fly-in/fly-out workforce of Western Australia's mining industry. In contrast to the lazy idyll of her Gracetown home in the Margaret River region, Hall found herself confronted with the jarring, extraordinary landscape of a floating platform. The works in Mine present a reflection upon this alien environment and Hall's response to the mining industry. The inspiration for their jutting forms come from the cranes, which form an integral part of life on an oil rig. Hall's fascination with positive and negative space transforms these forms into complex and beautiful patterns, leading to works that present a lyric play with symbol and shape.

At the heart of Hall's Mine series is a deep interest in perception. Hall's personal journey brought far greater discoveries than the formal elegance of cranes. While working in the Kimberley, the artist made her first proper contact with the world of Indigenous Australians. During a three month residency in which she worked at Warmun Art Centre (Turkey Creek) and Waringarri Aboriginal Arts (Kununurra), Hall found a new understanding of Indigenous culture. Working with senior and emerging artists, she began to question the concepts of ownership and knowledge on which her perception of the world was based.

The artists shared with Hall their ochres the sacred materials that their ancestors had longed mined from the earth. Using these ochres, Hall's work presents a profound mediation on our understanding of the process of valuing and owning the resources of our landscape. According to Hall, The work explores my personal experience of Indigenous and cultural issues, mining and the environment. These are being played out through the materials and the inspired patterning of the structures that dominate the daily skyline offshore. Mine looks at the relationship between seemingly different areas of Australian life and questions my perception.

In 2008, Katherine Hall was awarded the Worsley Award for Excellence by the Bunbury Regional Art Gallery. She has studied in Perth, Melbourne and Sweden, achieving a Masters in Visual Arts from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. Between 2002-2006 she was a lecturer in Visual Arts at Edith Cowan University, and between 2005-6 served as Head Lecturer at the University.

Mossenson Galleries is pleased to present this important new exhibition from one of Western Australia's most arresting contemporary artist. The exhibition will be opened from 6-8pm on Tuesday 2 June 2009. The artist will be present for the opening. For more information contact Mossenson Galleries Collingwood on (03) 9417 6694 or collingwood@mossensongalleries.com.au