Artist and Award- Winning Photographer Andrew Vukosav was seeking solitude when he initially took to the skies of Australia with his dog Frankie for company. From Melbourne to Uluru, to Alice Springs and Darwin traversing thousands of kms along the way in his Cessna 182 ‘Valerie’, Vukosav brings his incredible landscape image series exhibition Longitude Latitude Solitude to Sydney for the very first time this June.
Flying solo on journeys into remote terrain that can take days or weeks at a time, Andrew Vukosav has photographed a beautiful strangeness of the Australian continent from a viewpoint that defiantly overturns tourist clichés of outback landscapes. An exhibition six years in the making, its imagery roams from intricate and delicate coastlines to the vast dunes and rock plateaus of the central Australian deserts.
After flying into Darwin for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards where he met First Nations Artist and Elder Simon Hogan (Spinifex Art Project) who became a mentor and whose work he was profoundly inspired by Andrew began to understand the close spiritual bond First Nations people have with the land. He began to look at the landscape in a very different way.
Vukosav realised that longitude and latitude didn’t matter so much anymore, his quest was to explore the road less travelled. “Simon inspired me to open my heart and become a true adventurer who was finally learning to “see”” said Vukosav.
Created from a culmination of Andrew’s passion for flight, photography and love of the Australian landscape and after 350 hours and over 85,000 km later-just over twice around the globe, Latitude Longitude Solitude showcases Andrew’s own unique visual language that has informed each photograph to create a majestic image series that channels moments of discovery interwoven with stories discovered from later research.
“From the air, we don’t see borders, conflict, politics or race, somehow we appeared on this planet and our common purpose should be to look after it so we can live on it forever,” said Vukosav.
With decades of experience as a highly sought-after photographer, coupled with a lengthy love and practice of piloting and some intricate engineering from an Aerospace engineer, Andrew fitted out his single engine Cessna 182 with a Phase One 150mp XF Camera mounted in the underbelly of the fuselage. He uses the whole plane as a camera body, pitching it into position for each shot with spectacular results.
Every photograph is remarkable in its elaborate detail with beautiful patterns of vegetation, rock formations, flowing water and animal tracks. These monumental photos can look almost unreal, like abstract paintings and printed at mural size, they engulf the viewer.
After the successful unveiling of Longitude Latitude Solitude at a working hangar at Essendon airport and six group exhibitions already under his belt, the series has been exhibited at various galleries in Australia and Internationally- including in Paris, Berlin and Madrid with a Croatian Exhibition planned for October 2024.
Vukosav has felt honoured to showcase the beauty of Australia to different corners of the world and his next highly anticipated exhibition will be his Sydney debut of Latitude Longitude Solitude at the M2 Gallery in Surry Hills, Sydney from 20 June – 2 July 2024.
Latitude Longitude Solitude
M2 Gallery
4/450 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills NSW 2010, Australia
Mon-Fri 12pm – 7pm | Sat-Sun 10am – 5pm
