Investigating Landscape: Julien Playoust
Current exhibition
Works
Since 1977, my family has owned Millambri, a 4175 acre mixed-farming property in the Central West Slopes and Plains of New South Wales, approximately sixty kilometres south-west of Orange, on which we run more than 8,000 merino sheep. On Wiradjuri country, it borders twelve kilometres of Belubula River frontage. The property has been a place of great labour and love for my family for fifty years, and a source of great personal and artistic inspiration for me. Its contours are etched into my memory. The time spent there, particularly with my father, rests deep in my soul.
From 1977 we’ve cared for the land and built houses, a wool shed, machinery sheds, roads, water infrastructure and a business. We worked as a family with managers, station-hands, contractors and shearers. Mum backed dad up every step of the way. She kept us warm and well fed. The family lived in the city and we worked in the bush in our school holidays. ‘Pitt Street Farmers’ the locals called us. Still do, fifty years on. Dad loved the bush, loved Millambri, worked really hard at it, and hated being called that. Dad’s father Fernand was a wool buyer, as was his grandfather Joseph, who came to Australia from France with his brother George in 1889–91.
In 1977, I started walking around Millambri on my own. I was ten years old, with a single shot Lithgow .22 looking for rabbits. I have lived and worked in this landscape for half a century now. I have walked every part of the property. I have trod quietly and looked carefully. I have felt the sting of nettles and barbed wire, and the tiredness of an honest day’s labour. I have taken stock and smelled the diesel, blood and dust of success and failure. I have sat with the unpredictability of the season and the joy of rain, watching from the Top of the World as storms ghost through the district and miss us. I have enjoyed moments of bare courage and simplicity, like an ironbark tree still standing after being hit by lightning, and the sentience of the Hills Hoist in our back yard. These visceral punches and nods awaken me– slowly like a calloused hand or suddenly like the crack of a shot.
In 2011, I started drawing the Millambri landscape through the eyes of my personal and family connection to it: its landscape and labour being part of my consciousness. In June 2019, I commenced a sketchbook of drawings that became known as my ‘Landscape Codex’ – a typology of landscape, existence, memory and impermanence. I draw every time I go there now. My drawings are a reflection on person and place, investigations over time. A remembrance of trees and toil and the things we build, and the things we leave behind. A dialogue of observation and reflection on how we exist in the landscape, how we yield to it and how it yields to us: How we bend the knee, and how much we extract. Drawings of places that resonate: boundaries juxtaposed by fences, old gates, old yards and old memories.
From 1977 we’ve cared for the land and built houses, a wool shed, machinery sheds, roads, water infrastructure and a business. We worked as a family with managers, station-hands, contractors and shearers. Mum backed dad up every step of the way. She kept us warm and well fed. The family lived in the city and we worked in the bush in our school holidays. ‘Pitt Street Farmers’ the locals called us. Still do, fifty years on. Dad loved the bush, loved Millambri, worked really hard at it, and hated being called that. Dad’s father Fernand was a wool buyer, as was his grandfather Joseph, who came to Australia from France with his brother George in 1889–91.
In 1977, I started walking around Millambri on my own. I was ten years old, with a single shot Lithgow .22 looking for rabbits. I have lived and worked in this landscape for half a century now. I have walked every part of the property. I have trod quietly and looked carefully. I have felt the sting of nettles and barbed wire, and the tiredness of an honest day’s labour. I have taken stock and smelled the diesel, blood and dust of success and failure. I have sat with the unpredictability of the season and the joy of rain, watching from the Top of the World as storms ghost through the district and miss us. I have enjoyed moments of bare courage and simplicity, like an ironbark tree still standing after being hit by lightning, and the sentience of the Hills Hoist in our back yard. These visceral punches and nods awaken me– slowly like a calloused hand or suddenly like the crack of a shot.
In 2011, I started drawing the Millambri landscape through the eyes of my personal and family connection to it: its landscape and labour being part of my consciousness. In June 2019, I commenced a sketchbook of drawings that became known as my ‘Landscape Codex’ – a typology of landscape, existence, memory and impermanence. I draw every time I go there now. My drawings are a reflection on person and place, investigations over time. A remembrance of trees and toil and the things we build, and the things we leave behind. A dialogue of observation and reflection on how we exist in the landscape, how we yield to it and how it yields to us: How we bend the knee, and how much we extract. Drawings of places that resonate: boundaries juxtaposed by fences, old gates, old yards and old memories.
Julien Playoust, 2024
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Julien PlayoustRoad to the Pinnacle, 2024acrylic & mixed media on paper76.5 x 57 cm$2,900 -
Julien PlayoustRoad to the Pinnacle II, 2024acrylic & mixed media on paper76.5 x 57 cm$2,900
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Julien PlayoustFallen, 2024acrylic & mixed media on paper76.5 x 57 cm$2,900
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Julien PlayoustFallen II, 2024acrylic & mixed media on paper76.5 x 57 cm
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Julien PlayoustStanding by the road just out of Dalby, 2020charcoal on paper41 x 31 cm
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Julien PlayoustGhost trees near Glasshouse Mountains, 2020charcoal & chalk on paper42 x 30 cm$1,500
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Julien PlayoustHeading out the back I, the Creek, 2020charcoal & chalk on paper30 x 21 cm$950
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Julien PlayoustHeading out the back III, old man tree II, 2020charcoal & chalk on paper30 x 21 cm$950
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Julien PlayoustConvergence and confluence III, Four Mile Creek and the Belubula River, 2020charcoal & sepia ink on paper30 x 21 cm$950
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Julien PlayoustConvergence and confluence VI, Four Mile Creek and the Belubula River, 2020charcoal & sepia ink on paper30 x 21 cm$950
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Julien PlayoustConvergence and confluence I, Four Mile Creek and the Belubula River, 2020charcoal & sepia ink on paper30 x 21 cm$950
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Julien PlayoustConvergence and confluence IV, Four Mile Creek and the Belubula River, 2020charcoal & sepia ink on paper30 x 21 cm$950
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Julien PlayoustConvergence and confluence VII, Four Mile Creek and the Belubula River, 2020charcoal & sepia ink on paper30 x 21 cm$950
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Julien PlayoustConvergence and confluence II, Four Mile Creek and the Belubula River, 2020charcoal & sepia ink on paper30 x 21 cm$950
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Julien PlayoustRemnant XVII, down by the river, 2022mixed media on paper51 x 23 cm$1,500
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Julien PlayoustInto the forest, landscape and loss III, 2020charcoal & watercolour on paper42 x 30 cm$1,500
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Julien PlayoustHeading out the back IV, old yards across to Joe’s, 2020acrylic & mixed media on board87 x 61 cm$3,200
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Julien PlayoustHeading out the back IV, old yards across to Joe’s, 2020charcoal & chalk on paper30 x 21 cm
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Julien PlayoustHeading out the back III, old man tree II, 2020acrylic & mixed media on board87 x 61 cm$3,200
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Julien PlayoustMorning frost, Canowindra, 2020charcoal & chalk on paper42 x 30 cm$1,500
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Julien PlayoustThree trees II, 2022oil on board34 x 46 cm$2,200
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Julien PlayoustBush parable I, laughing in the face of decay (happiness goes to heaven thru’ those hills…), 2023oil & charcoal on paper76 x 57 cm
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Julien PlayoustThree trees I, 2022oil on board34 x 46 cm$2,200
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Julien PlayoustIronbark I, 2022oil on board46 x 34 cm$2,200
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Julien PlayoustOn the road from Mudgee to Lithgow via Rylstone and Capertee, 2020mixed media on paper41 x 31 cm$1,500
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Julien PlayoustManeroo I, 2022mixed media on paper36 x 26 cm$1,200
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Julien PlayoustManeroo II, 2022mixed media on paper36 x 26 cm$1,200
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Julien PlayoustLittle morning hillside sketch, 2021charcoal & chalk on paper30 x 21 cm$950
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Julien PlayoustPieces (PCS), Laurie (sheep givin’ the bird), 2020charcoal on paper59 x 42 cm$1,650
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Julien PlayoustPieces (PCS), Rob IV, 2020charcoal on paper59 x 42 cm$1,650
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Julien PlayoustLandscape and labour XIII-XV, Burg Calais, gun shearer, 2020charcoal & mixed media on board80 x 61 cm$3,200
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Julien PlayoustLandscape and labour XVII, 'roo shear'n, 2020acrylic & mixed media on board80 x 6 cm$3,200
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Julien PlayoustBilly Goat Gate I, another good day in the bush, 2024mixed media on paper40 x 88 cm$2,200
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Julien PlayoustHills Hoist and water tank study, 2021charcoal on paper30 x 21 cm$950
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Julien PlayoustHills Hoist before the yards, 2020charcoal & chalk on paper30 x 84 cm
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Julien PlayoustHeading out the back III, old man tree I, 2020charcoal & chalk on paper30 x 21 cm
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Julien PlayoustLandscape and Labour, on the board, 2022acrylic & mixed media on canvas76 x 180 cm$6,000
