Lennox Gelato & Coffee Co

Address: 76 Ballina St, Lennox Head NSW 2478

Phone:(02) 6687 5552

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Grono, who was born and grew up on the Central Coast, gathers her inspiration directly from the world around her – the beach and ocean, the wilderness and bush, and the extraordinary tribe of people that inhabit the Northern Rivers, where she now lives.  “Wild landscapes are integral to my being,” says the 38-year-old photographer.  “I always loved exploring, and I think from an early age I could find beauty in ordinary everyday things.  If I wasn’t outside exploring, I used to love to read – and I was a huge fan of the Japanese TV series Monkey Magic.”

Natalie Grono’s Children of the Tribe was a finalist in the 2014 Australian Life photographic competition.

It’s a connection that makes sense looking at the apparently simple but layered meaning of the winning photograph from the Olive Cotton award, Pandemonium’s Shadow.  The photograph beat 82 finalists from all around Australia to take out the prestigous award, with a $20,000 prize attached, which is named after one of Australia’s best loved leading twentieth century photographers, and features Grono’s daughters Amali (left), and Ava-Luna (with the dress over her head).

In all of Grono’s photography a love of humanity and the world shines out.  “I remember once on my travels I was staying at a remote community and I was given the nick-name ‘the small girl with the big smile’,” she says.  It’s her open-mindeness and deep connection to local community that has seen Grono create such images as Feather and the Goddess Pool (2014) of local Byron Bay resident, Feather, which won Grono the 2015 National Photographic Portrait Prize People’s Choice Award.

Feather, by Natalie Grono, winner of the National Photographic Portrait Prize People’s Choice Award.

“I was drawn to the fact that Feather, who is in her mid-70s now, is so comfortable in her own skin despite the pressure that is put on women by everybody to be a certain age and type if they’re going to bare their skin at the beach,” she says. “I think the image resonated with people because it invites them to look at a confident older woman is proud of her body and not afraid to show the lines that tell her story.”

Although as a child Grono hadn’t yet identified her desire to be a photographer, when she was studying journalism at University, it quickly became a creative passion, and a way for her to communicate with the world.  During the past 15 years she has honed her skill – bringing a photojournalistic intention to the most lyrical of subjects, and creating playful and mysterious images that work on many levels, reminiscent in some ways of Julia Cameron, and her purposely out-of-focus portraits, that brought an energy and movement into portrait photography for the first time.

A mother to two children, Grono’s favourite personal work is Sea Dreaming, a series she began after the birth of her first daughter.  She photographed the series in the Lennox region, and for her the work conjures memories of her childhood, and the never-ending enchantment of the beach.  But although she loves to photograph her local environment the adventurer in her has taken her to many exotic locations, and perhaps some of her most enigmatic works came from her  journey to Black Rock Desert to photograph of the Burning Man Festival, which produced her series, Rites of Passage.

Natalie Grono: Burning Man Love – from the Black Rock Desert Burning Man Festival.

“The Festival sees around 50,000 people all gather in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to create a temporary city, Black Rock City.  It takes place on an ancient lake bed known as Playa,” says Grono, “and the festival is dedicated to community, art practices, radical self-expression and self-reliance.  A week later, everybody leaves, and the particpants, known as ‘Burners’ leave no trace that they’ve been there.  It’s a really extraordinary experience.”

Grono’s latest series is closer to home than Nevada.  She’s worked on a project entitled the Moon and the Muse, featuring inspirational women of the Northern Rivers. Don’t be surprised if there are many more prizes to come.

The Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture is on show at the Tweed Regional Gallery until Sunday September 27, 2015: tweed.nsw.gov.au/Exhibitions

You can see more of Natalie Grono’s work on nataliegrono.com

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Clouds gather around Wollumbin. Photograph: Andrew Sooby

When photographer Andrew Sooby was at the Tweed Regional Art Gallery recently, the moody weather prompted him to catch this atmospheric shot of Wollumbin, (Mount Warning) near Murwillumbah.  “The storm was out there,” says Sooby, “and it was a perfect moment to capture it.”

Andrew Sooby used a Fuji XE2; lens at 300mm (35mm equiv); 1/1600 sec; f11; ISO 200.

If you want to contact Andrew Sooby Photography go to  luminousmudbrick.net

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Edwin Wilson, now 71, stands as one of the most notable poets to emerge from the Northern Rivers. Born in Lismore, he spent his school years in both Brunswick Heads and the poet’s precious Mullumbimby, a town that remains central in his imagination to this day. The rather unusual turns his career as a writer has taken, including the ‘Eileen’ furore, can be discovered at his own website, while Mullumbimby Dreaming, an exhibition of Wilson’s paintings and poems, is currently on display at the Tweed River Art Gallery until October 12.

Poet and painter Edwin Wilson’s The Mullumbimby Kid

Wilson, who worked in community relations at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens until retirement in 2002, in the same year published the comprehensive Anthology: Collected Poems, a rich, occasionally nostalgic array of poems that swings between pastoral and urban, sentimental and cutting, loving and caustic. ‘Flowering Trunk’ was first published in 1990 in the collection Songs of the Forest: Rainforest Poems.

Flowering Trunk

Like old crones

(warts and all)

beyond the change of life –

with scaly bark,

deep furrowed trunk,

pale brides with pliant bones

swell on the heartwood,

savoured and mysterious,

and tumble into flower –

unctuous nectar cups

of aromatic esters

spiked with love and hope;

to abrogate the loneliness

of jungle scrub –

as garland for a bower bird,

or balm for forest mice.

(You can check out Barnaby Smith’s work on his website:  (https://www.barnaby-smith.moonfruit.com)

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