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All My Fat Country

Rod Moss’s luminous drawings are born out of decades of intimate relationship, conversation, engagement, and profound friendship with Arrernte peoples and their beloved country. The drawings are crafted, as Moss puts it, with an intent ‘…to immerse the eye in intimate detail.’ Moss delights in the detail. He celebrates it. ‘What bounty,’ he exclaims. But without the craft, the artistry, and the drawing skills, Moss would not have been able to respond so powerfully to old Patrick’ Ampetyane Hayes’s expansive call to depict his ‘fat country.’

 

After years of practice, observation, immersion, and above all, of walking alongside his many Arrernte guides and mentors, Moss can indeed ‘sing the language of the curve.’ And much more. Moss’s drawings, and the poetic words that accompany them, are a rapturous singing of country, a symphony composed of loving detail, a tender expression of gratitude — the micro made epic. And as a member of the audience, I too am guided. Informed. Enraptured. And deeply grateful.

These drawings are paired with Moss' poetry also inspired by the land called Dancing Under heavy Mannors. 

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Sleep not in the blissful dawn. Sleep not where the breeze is born

2020, 123 x 216 cm

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Brushes of Secret Fires

2021,123 x 206 cm

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Irlpme Creekbed

2021, 123 x 205 cm

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Quartz Hillock

2020, 123 x 178 cm

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Utyerrke Apwerte

2021, 123 x 220 cm

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Centuries of sobs and lamentations gnaw at their heels

2020, 123 x 206 cm

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One by one we wander, orphans on the road

2020, 123 x 206 cm

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Arelhe Apwerte

2020, 123 x 216 cm

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Creekbed Cliff

2020, 123 x 206 cm

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John Hayes Rockhole

2020, 123 x 225 cm

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As Emily Flows So Flows Emily

2021, 118 x 198 cm

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In the Country of Blind Lice

2020, 110 x 176 cm

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2020, 123 x 225 cm

Pond at Wigleys Gorge
 

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Pool at Wigleys Gorge

2021, 124 x 205 cm

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Creekbed Cliff

20120, 123 x 225 cm

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The Tender Fellowship of Rocks

2020, 123 x 191 cm

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Out of the seed flies a shadow looking for a name. Call it breath

2021, 123 x 206 cm

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Nthwerrke (Northern Aspect)

1994, 123 x 210 cm

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The Source

2019, 123 x 204 cm

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Irlpme Rocks

2020, 123 x 206 cm

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