Joe Furlonger: Horizons

28 Farming and the movement of agricultural bounty occupy most folk in the places Furlonger visits and paints, and he has an astounding knowledge of land use techniques and seasonal awareness. On a trip with him in 2011, as we searched for painting spots around Warwick, in the Downs region, Furlonger pointed out the technical specifications of various irrigators, tractors and fertilisers, giving us a rundown of the probable impacts of coal seam gas exploration on the country. He got rather excited each time we passed a dilapidated structure or abandoned dance hall. ‘Shedology’, he calls this peculiar interest, adding, ‘You can just imagine it . . . it’d have some old timber floor from heaven in it . . .’ Later that same day, Evan Hughes (Furlonger’s then art dealer) asked if the beautiful grey areas in one of his paintings hinted at dry or rocky ground, to which the artist matter-of-factly replied, ‘Nup, it’s the colour of Roundup’. It turned out that the delightful, grey-stained earth in his paintings was, in fact, an accurate portrayal of the land treated with herbicide. In the ensuing years, Furlonger also developed a unique way to present us with a vertical picture plane. In many of his most memorable works, he raises up the back of the picture plane and politely shoves the far distance of landscapes in our faces. If a ribbon-thin horizon line does sometimes register blue or darker sky along the upper edge, he still manages a terrific conflation of middle and far distance. These are passages where a kaleidoscopic pushing and pulling of space is achieved, and a viewer can experience the contradictory sensations of vastness and tight focus. What the artist refers to as a ‘Chinese projection of space’ has resulted Wilkie Creek, evening (detail) 2021