Troy Ruffels: stone tides weeping trees
Through creating these works, I ask what it is to exist and inhabit this place of lutruwita/Tasmania – and by extension, the world.
– Troy Ruffels
The exhibition ’Stone Tides Weeping Trees’ is a visual and poetic response to the Miena Cider Gums of Tasmania's central highland plateau and Lake District. Walking on the plateau, through bone gardens of rock, moss, and bleached wood, I feel a sense of melancholy. There is a weight in the atmosphere. A weight I feel comes from impending loss, from the absence of something. These trees contained the span of living memory in their branches and roots, but many now lie silent, and those that persist are struggling. As the author Robert McFarlane wrote in ‘Underland’ - 'When viewed in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert. New responsibilities declare themselves…. Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses. We live on a restless Earth.’
Troy Ruffels - August 2023
Ruffels has travelled and exhibited widely, holding solo exhibitions both nationally within Australia, and internationally in Spain, Malaysia, Singapore and the UK. His work has been featured in numerous Australian and internationally curated group survey exhibitions, having work represented at venues in New York, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Malaysia and Singapore. He is a Primavera Artist (Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 1997), Young Tasmanian of the Year (Australia Day Council, Arts Category, 1998), Australian Post-Graduate Scholar (1999) and an Anne and Gordon Samstag International Scholar (2000). Ruffels lived and worked in Malaysia 2003 – 04 when he undertook the Rimbun Dahan Residency Program supported by Angela Hijjas and Hijjas Kasturi, - an experience that has left a lasting impression on his life and work. His work is held in numerous public and private collections both in Australia and internationally.
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