Jack Rowland’s latest exhibition, Un-Earth presents a series of seemingly alien landscapes. These paintings, while otherworldly, are inspired by Lake Mungo, a dried up lake located in Western New South Wales where the oldest human remains outside of Africa have been found. This unearthly landscape of skeletal sand mounds and its intersection with the ancient past, led Rowland to visualize an imagined future, where echoes of the past linger in a post-climate crisis world.

Contemplating humanity’s past and future through an artistic lens inspired by science fiction, Rowland presents a dark cinematic landscape suspended in time and space. Does the landscape depict a desolate state of the future of earth or a new planet to be terraformed? Rowland’s paintings prompt their viewer to simultaneously imagine two very different futures: in one we might become ancient remains for others to unearth, and the other we might move forward to explore undiscovered and unknown landscapes.

Jack Rowland is a Melbourne-based artist that has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Melbourne and has been a finalist in The Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, The Hawkesbury Art Prize and The Albany Art Prize. In 2009, he completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting), at RMIT University in Melbourne.