Thin Air : a portfolio of 12 copperplate photogravure prints of Ladakh.

[Ladakh and Melbourne : the artist, 2013]. Complete suite of twelve copperplate photogravures, printed in an edition of 5; 290 x 390 mm (plate size), 395 x 485 mm (sheet size); all titled and dated 2013 by the artist lower left, and signed by the artist lower right in 2023; very fine, loosely housed in a custom handmade protective box.

Acclaimed photographer Robert Ashton’s series of copperplate photogravures were produced from his own photographs taken during his visit to Ladakh in 2013.

‘When photographer Robert Ashton arrived in the barren plateaus of India’s northern Ladakh region, the snow had just melted, leaving the markings of rivulets in the scree slopes. The atmosphere was so clear the distant blue mountains were crisp and vivid.

He wasn’t there only to photograph the remarkable landscape; the disputed border zone between India and Pakistan bears the scars of a long history of war.

Ashton first visited India with a camera as a 22-year-old in the 1970s. For his latest body of work Thin Air he returned to document the fading mementos of war among the mountains: bomb shelters, shrines, monuments to fallen Indian soldiers.

“I wanted to photograph the absolute pristine beauty of the place with the added motifs of the history of war. I was interested in the way these relics were melting and reintegrating back into the landscape,” Ashton said.
 
“Because of the nature of the atmosphere, things were preserved in a a strange way.” … “I was drawn to the barren beauty and the exquisite light of the landscape,” Ashton said.’ (Ella Rubeli, SMH, 21 August 2015)

ROBERT ASHTON studied photography in the 1970s at Prahran College under Paul Cox and Athol Shmith, and first exhibited his work at Brummels Gallery of Photography (Australia’s first gallery devoted specifically to photography) in 1973. Since that time he has been exhibiting continuously and has work held in many of the public collections in Australia including the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Gallery of Australia. His work is also held in private collections in USA and Europe. His main area of practice has been in landscape and particularly the local landscape along the west coast of Victoria, where he has been living since 1982. His work embraces a range of photographic mediums from digital to large format analogue, in particular photogravure printing and more recently wetplate collodion.

ROBERT ASHTON: EXHIBITIONS

1973         Faces and Places   Brummels  Gallery, Melbourne

1974         Into the Hollow Mountains   Brummels  Gallery, Melbourne.

1976         Between Light and Dark   Centre for Photography,  Sydney, Brummels Gallery, Melbourne

1976         Between Light and Dark   Brummels Gallery, Melbourne

1979         Adventures in Paradise?   Church Street Photographic Centre, Melbourne

1979         Adventures in Paradise?   Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney

1987         Photogravure Images   United Artists Gallery, Melbourne

1990         What are you Doing?  What are you Saying?  Luba Bilu  Gallery, Melbourne

1993         Hidden Things   Qdos Gallery, Lorne

2000         Life Sanctuary   Patricia Autore Gallery, Melbourne.

2001         Different Dreams-Same Reality   Patricia Autore Gallery, Melbourne

2003         Evidence   Little Malop Gallery, Geelong.

2005         Visual Instinct   Libby Edwards Gallery , Melbourne.

2006         Recognition   Pigment Gallery, Prague.

2007         Snapshots from the Edge   QDOS Gallery, Lorne

2009         Photographs from The Edge   Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne

2012         Postmortem  Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne.

2013         Interior/Exterior    Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne.

2014         Into The Hollow Mountains  Colourfactory Gallery, Melbourne

2014         Interior/Exterior + Postmortem gravures  Black Eye Gallery, Sydney

2015         Thin Air   QDOS Gallery  Lorne , Colourfactory Gallery, Melbourne

2021.        Bush Theatre  QDOS Gallery, Lorne

2023         Everything Is True. QDOS Gallery, Lorne

 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 

1982         Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane

1988         The Thousand Mile Stare, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art

1998          Waterproof-Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon Portugal

2003          Australian Photographic Portrait Prize, Art Gallery of NSW

2007          Ulrich/Schubert Photography Prize , Gold Coast Art Gallery.

2007, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2017,2018, 2023     Bowness Photography Prize, Monash Gallery of Art.

2023.         Everything is True.  Ballarat photo Biennale

2023          Everything is True.  Pingyao Photo Festival, Pingyao China

 

SELECTED PUBLISHING

1974         Into The Hollow Mountains – a Portrait of Fitzroy

1981         A Day in The Life of Australia

1988         The Thousand Mile Stare

1990         Twenty Contemporary Australian Photographers

1992         Sites of the Imagination

1999         Waterproof : water photography since 1852

2003         Trace : Photos & Poetry (with Gregory Day)

 

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

National Gallery of Australia; National Gallery of Victoria; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery; Phillip Morris Collection; Melbourne City Council; Waverley City Council; John Sands Collection; Charles Darwin University, as well as many public and private collections in Australia, USA, Malaysia and Czech Republic.