Artists Sue Michael and Mark Thomson share a profound fondness for the ‘settled areas’ of South Australia - the Mid North, the Mallee and Eyre Peninsula.

The small towns where life endures and small mercies are to be found: the stoic geraniums flowering in an old paint tin. Or the Op shop with its racks of old clothes and the gentle banter between the ladies working there.

Love, meaning and happiness stubbornly persist. And the stillness at sunrise and sunset are magical.
“Within the simple twigs, dust and modest domestic objects lies a life force, a momentum that overcomes the geographical challenges of these places,” says Sue Michael.

Sue’s paintings are often notations from a scanned horizon, glimpses or taxonomical sortings, using the heart as a sensory organ. Larger works consider the complexities of place in a consideration of the complexities that a traveller motoring past often overlooks.

Mark Thomson’s images in Settled Areas are about never giving up. “There’s a gritty determination to be found in the places and people… yet also a kind of grace and a generosity of spirit. There is an unlikely beauty to be found everywhere, even in the screeching of the galahs as they settle down for the night."

His photography and audio snippets are the products of decades of driving along dusty backroads and stopping to consider the vista.

Mark is the author of numerous books including Blokes & Sheds, Rare Trades, and Meat, Metal and Fire. He is also the creator of the ABC television project The Lost Tools of Henry Hoke.