Dawntreading

CATALOGUE ESSAY by Sally Glaetzer
In Joshua Andree’s studio behind his carport in Hobart, time is the medium — stretched onto canvas with paint. Andree isn’t capturing landscapes so much as the contrasting nature of time —  both fleeting and eternal.

In one arresting work, a single cloud is sculpturesque. In another, a mottled sky takes on the barely pink of dusk. They capture brief moments of exquisite beauty while reminding us of what Andree refers to as the ‘entire vastness of time’.

Andree’s new works ditch the ‘crutch’, as he calls it, of the horizon. No more anchoring the eye with dirt and rock. Instead, he’s obsessed with the goldmine of inspiration in the atmosphere. Sky is the solid focus. The landscape, if present at all, is secondary. Although more abstract than ‘landscape’, the paintings are very much an ode to place. Amid the bustle of family life and the juggle of work, the ever-changing sky over Kunanyi/Mt Wellington is a constant reminder for Andree to stop and to appreciate.

The title for the show references CS Lewis’ fictional Dawn Treader, a ship that sails from west to east, symbolising fresh hope and new beginnings.

Two side-by-side paintings capture the changing light as day turns to night (and vice versa) against the southern and northern slopes of Kunanyi. It’s a playful and clever homage to the diptych of mountain and sky as viewed from his front porch and backyard – his slice of suburban paradise.

“As a painter my job is to record the world, and this is the world I live in,” Andree says. He’s swapped long drives for staying put, answering to the sky he lives under.

Andree abhors ‘art wank’ and isn’t trying to be profound, but his paintings are just that. You can sense the hours that went into honouring both this exact time and place and acknowledging the ‘momentary nature of existence’. People have been painting this sky for more than 60,000 years and Andree sees himself as ‘just part of a long heritage of people who have wanted to capture this world’.

While not politically motivated, Andree’s works of observation and ‘record keeping’ are a form of activism – reminding us to connect with and, ultimately, protect the world around us.

Words by Sally Glaetzer, 2025

Sally Glaetzer is a journalist and arts writer based in Lutruwita / Tasmania. She has won several MEAA Tasmanian media awards including Arts Writer of the Year, Feature Writer of the Year and Best Comment and Analysis.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT
'For the last 12 months, I have watched the slow rotation of the earth, the creep of time and the changing of the seasons revolving around the punctuation point of my home, kunanyi/ Mount Wellington, that sits as a sentinel above Hobart. I have watched with particular interest the moments where day becomes night and then, the inevitability of night again becoming day. The paintings develop an interest in the abstract potential within the landscape that these moments provide and the momentary nature of existence.

The title for the show references CS Lewis’ fictional “Dawntreader”, a ship that sails from West to East, subverting the traditional connotation of death and closure associated with travelling west, symbolising, in the same way as night becoming day, new starts, new hope and new opportunity. These brief moments of the day exist as small moments of wonder and beauty, where new light dissolves all around and washes anew the entire landscape providing brevity in a changing, complex and increasingly challenging world.  

These paintings, while situated geographically, seek to convey a higher sense of the psychological landscape, as such becoming images not of the landscape, but of moments. There is grandeur in a lone cloud. There is wonder in the distance to the moon. And back.'