Once Were Kings, 2023,C Type photograph, 59.4 x 84.1 cm.

The Poetry of Decay

 

British photographer, Christopher Rimmer explores the fragility of human ambition in the unforgiving harshness of the Australian Outback, inviting his viewers to ponder fundamental questions about the human condition and its impact on the environment.

Christopher Rimmer’s latest body of work, Remnant, the Tragedy of Lost Significance, represents a notable departure from the artist’s previous visual explorations, using photography as his medium, in so far as the series was produced in its entirety in the stark and unrelenting wilderness of the Australian Outback, rather than in Sub-Saharan Africa, which provided the back drop for the work for which he is best known.

Perhaps a continuation of the artistic threads he explored in his 2013 series, Sign of Life, Rimmer once again employs the desert as a metaphor in order to explore what he sees as the ultimate futility of human endeavour when considered as a fragment of time in space. Remnant perhaps takes on a darker hue though, when viewed through the prism of a global pandemic and the disturbing and increasingly obvious effects of global warming which provided more than just background noise during the work’s creation between 2021 and 2022.

 

The Car That Fell to Earth, 2023. Christopher Rimmer. C Type Print

 

In Remnant, Rimmer presents twenty-five large scale C Type colour photographs depicting the abandoned relics of human endeavour or incident that remain in the harsh Outback environment of Central Australia, in many cases, their original context now lost to history. Some represent colossal undertakings such as the remains of the doomed Ghan railway line, breathtaking in its audacity, with its vision of a connecting rail line between Adelaide and Alice Springs, traversing a landscape unimaginably harsh and subject to the climatic whims of the desert environment expected to support it.

Destination Nowhere, 2023, Christopher Rimmer, C Type Print.

Other subjects are more poignant and banal, such as the crash scene of a fatal road accident which occurred in 1961 or the remains of the failed solider settlement schemes of the post-World War One era. In Remnant, Rimmer attempts to establish a thematic thread that connects progress, human endeavour, arrogance and hubris with the inescapable certainty that, in the end, only time endures.

‘Perhaps we have to ask ourselves some pertinent questions, such as: How much do we actually need to live?,’ asks Rimmer, ‘How much does the drive to achieve any more than what we need have on the single planet we are all compelled to inhabit? Does human comfort always have to come at cost to the environment?’

We Will Live Forever, 2023, Christopher Rimmer, C Type Print.

Rimmer’s previous work has constantly explored this theme, either explicitly or obliquely commencing in 2011 with ‘In Africa’ at Melbourne’s Galleria Rocco. His idea then was to present a body of work that would encourage an emotional response in those who viewed the work, in this case, large-scale, close-up portraits of the animals put most at risk by human aspirations and ego.

‘My feeling was that if people established an emotional connection, then that would also involve a commitment to care, and it’s the same with everything I’ve done since. I’m committed to living simply and sustainably as far as I am able and I’m constantly exploring ways in which to achieve a minimal foot print whilst accepting the fact that every living thing has some level of environmental impact, it’s a question of how destructive that impact is, particularly when it is driven by ego and hubris rather than genuine need. ’

 

It is predicted that Australia will feel the effects of climate charge sooner and more intensely than in other parts of the world, a harbinger of which the photographer experienced first-hand when his home, surrounded by the dense forests of South Eastern Australia, was directly threatened by the catastrophic bush fires which occurred in 2019.

‘In the tiny community where I currently live, we had a lucky reprieve,’ Rimmer recalls. ‘A wind change at the eleventh hour, blew the fire back on itself, but it was an incredibly close call and the experience really got me thinking about the extent to which we had brought this calamity upon ourselves by constantly realising our progress at the expense of the environment, instead of exploring ways to achieve the same in tandem, and perhaps temper our aspirations at the same time, because if we don’t develop better systems in order to achieve this tandem effect, then nature will do it for us.’

The Means of Progress, 2023, Christopher Rimmer, C Type Print.

A photograph from Remnant entitled, ‘Nature Always Wins in the End,’ seems to emphasise this idea: a ruined house with a wrecked family sedan parked alongside, both isolated in a Martian like landscape, suggest a sudden and catastrophic event many years prior – a disintegrating memorial to flawed aspiration and its ultimate defeat by nature.

‘There is much in the Australian Outback landscape to remind us of the folly of human endeavour,’ adds Rimmer, ‘particularly when attempted via Western ideas. The relics of misadventure are everywhere to be seen and when contrasted with the First Nations people who lived in harmony with this unforgiving environment for thousands of years, it reveals the inherent egotism and hubris which inhabits the mantra of constant progress and constant economic growth.’

The End of God, Christopher Rimmer, 2023, C Type Print

Remnant attempts to pose these questions whilst at the same time showing the Australian Outback in all its stark and unusual beauty. Although photographed in colour, Rimmer’s work possesses a stark, almost monochromatic quality, which is undeniably beautiful yet somehow discomforting.

His subjects are placed centre frame but aren’t permitted to dominate their locality, a compositional device which he employs to emphasize the ultimate dominance and incredible vastness of each vista he has chosen.

Leaving Platform 9, Christopher Rimmer, 2023, C type Print.

As 2023 draws to a close, global events suggest once again that civilisation is beset by a new postmodern epoch of human failure, Rimmer’s latest body of work explores the connecting tissue that binds progress and aspiration with futility and destruction. Perhaps at this particular juncture in the human story, the questions posed require answers never more urgently.

Christopher Rimmer, Remnant, the Tragedy of Lost Significance will be shown by Angela Tandori at Art and Collectors Gallery in Melbourne, Australia later this year and will be available to be viewed online at: artandcollectors.com