The images presented in this gallery were created during my Honours year at La Trobe University Bendigo in 1996. 42 images in total were created for this series.
In these works, I explore abstraction, texture and the paradoxical and beguiling beauty found in the surface of rust on discarded machinery.  
In my thesis, I argued that in this industrial society in which we live, the prevailing attitude of people is of excessive consumerism. We have become a throw-away society - money and possessions have increasingly become the"idol" of people, and their drive or "reason for living".  
My belief is that we have become an increasingly alienated and toxic society, spiritually as well as environmentally. Modern humanity creates their possessions from substances taken from the environment, uses them for a while, and then discards them when something new or "better" is made to replace them. Obsolete possessions - once life essentials, are then discarded and left for the elements of nature and time to rot and decompose.
The surface of discarded machinery, which become "skulls of our throwaway society" reveal the history of its treatment by the elements of weather and time by portraying evidence of erosion, mould, and decay, as well as damage inflicted by mankind.