The work: Debbie Walker Tremlett, Charcoal II, 2021. Oil on canvas, 60 x 60cm. Courtesy: the artist.
Feeling compelled to visit the burnt remains of areas affected by the 2019-2020 summer bushfires near her home in Fremantle, artist Debbie Walker Tremlett waded through the ashes and found herself in awe. “I stood in a cremated world”, she says, “and wondered, did we do this? I heard nothing in response.” Her work Charcoal depicts a twisted line of red emergency tape against a backdrop of scorched leaves, her skilled use of oils making the plastic almost real enough to touch.
Tremlett’s practice approaches photorealism from both a technical perspective, with tiny brush-marks mimicking real life, and through the use of unconventional angles and surprising viewpoints. In this work, the emergency tape sits in sharp relief against a background that seems slightly out of focus, snaking across the viewer’s line of vision as if blowing softly in the wind. Just as the rich colour of the tape emphasises the dark shapes beyond, the bushfires brought into razor focus the scope of the climate disaster our planet is currently experiencing. Charcoal has thus become a stark warning, Tremlett’s striking use of perspective and expert application of paint sounding the alarm on behalf of a world in a state of turmoil.