The Gleaming is a new body of work by David Usher. The title plays with the idea of ‘gleaning’ as a reference to extracting ‘something’ from essential materials, and to the idea of something that gleams in the light or metaphorically combines the act of ‘looking’ with the sensation of ‘seeing’.

Usher’s last series of ceramics and paintings have developed from his recent travels to Western Queensland, capturing fragments of memories and emotions embedded within family locations that hold and resonate with the emotion of a familiar landscape. The series of works in this show celebrate the late afternoon light by the river at Hillsborough, and the forgotten spaces in the corners of paddocks that remain unchanged and unaffected by the world.

One such place lies behind the old sheep yards and has been left largely untouched since 1951. The footprint of the yards and the sandalwood fences are still standing even though a number of floods have washed through the site. There are Carbine trees and Cyprus pines and Sandalwood in small groves that are scattered along the river here, each with their own atmosphere, light, and mood. As Usher identifies, ‘It’s 4pm in the afternoon as we move through the trees and the light ripples across the ground and other surfaces creating a dream-like reverie of landscape’.