Thin Air : a portfolio of 12 copperplate photogravure prints of Ladakh.

[Ladakh and Melbourne : the artist, 2013]. Complete suite of twelve copperplate photogravures, printed in an edition of 5; 290 x 390 mm (plate size), 395 x 485 mm (sheet size); all titled and dated 2013 by the artist lower left, and signed by the artist lower right in 2023; very fine, loosely housed in a custom handmade protective box. Acclaimed photographer Robert Ashton’s series of copperplate photogravures were produced from his own photographs taken during his visit to Ladakh in 2013. ‘When photographer Robert Ashton arrived in the barren plateaus of India’s northern Ladakh region, the snow had just melted, leaving the markings of rivulets in the scree slopes. The atmosphere was so clear the distant blue mountains were crisp and vivid. He wasn’t there only to photograph the remarkable landscape; the disputed border zone between India and Pakistan bears the scars of a long history of war. Ashton first visited India with a camera as a 22-year-old in the 1970s. For his latest body of work Thin Air he returned to document the fading mementos of war among the mountains: bomb shelters, shrines, monuments to fallen Indian soldiers. “I wanted to photograph the absolute pristine beauty of the place with the added motifs of the history of war. I was interested in the way these relics were melting and reintegrating back into the landscape,” Ashton said.   “Because of the nature of the atmosphere, things were preserved in a a strange way.” … “I was drawn to the barren beauty and the exquisite light of the landscape,” Ashton said.’ (Ella Rubeli, SMH, 21 August 2015) ROBERT ASHTON studied photography in the 1970s at Prahran College under Paul Cox and Athol Shmith, and first exhibited his work at Brummels Gallery of Photography (Australia’s first gallery devoted specifically to photography) in 1973. Since that time he has been exhibiting continuously and has work held in many of the public collections in Australia including the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Gallery of Australia. His work is also held in private collections in USA and Europe. His main area of practice has been in landscape and particularly the local landscape along the west coast of Victoria, where he has been living since 1982. His work embraces a range of photographic mediums from digital to large format analogue, in particular photogravure printing and more recently wetplate collodion. ROBERT ASHTON: EXHIBITIONS 1973         Faces and Places   Brummels  Gallery, Melbourne 1974         Into the Hollow Mountains   Brummels  Gallery, Melbourne. 1976         Between Light and Dark   Centre for Photography,  Sydney, Brummels Gallery, Melbourne 1976         Between Light and Dark   Brummels Gallery, Melbourne 1979         Adventures in Paradise?   Church Street Photographic Centre, Melbourne 1979         Adventures in Paradise?   Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney 1987         Photogravure Images   United Artists Gallery, Melbourne 1990         What are you Doing?  What are you Saying?  Luba Bilu  Gallery, Melbourne 1993         Hidden Things   Qdos Gallery, Lorne 2000         Life Sanctuary   Patricia Autore Gallery, Melbourne. 2001         Different Dreams-Same Reality   Patricia Autore Gallery, Melbourne 2003         Evidence   Little Malop Gallery, Geelong. 2005         Visual Instinct   Libby Edwards Gallery , Melbourne. 2006         Recognition   Pigment Gallery, Prague. 2007         Snapshots from the Edge   QDOS Gallery, Lorne 2009         Photographs from The Edge   Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne 2012         Postmortem  Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne. 2013         Interior/Exterior    Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne. 2014         Into The Hollow Mountains  Colourfactory Gallery, Melbourne 2014         Interior/Exterior Postmortem gravures  Black Eye Gallery, Sydney 2015         Thin Air   QDOS Gallery  Lorne , Colourfactory Gallery, Melbourne 2021.        Bush Theatre  QDOS Gallery, Lorne 2023         Everything Is True. QDOS Gallery, Lorne   SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS  1982         Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane 1988         The Thousand Mile Stare, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art 1998          Waterproof-Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon Portugal 2003          Australian Photographic Portrait Prize, Art Gallery of NSW 2007          Ulrich/Schubert Photography Prize , Gold Coast Art Gallery. 2007, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2017,2018, 2023     Bowness Photography Prize, Monash Gallery of Art. 2023.         Everything is True.  Ballarat photo Biennale 2023          Everything is True.  Pingyao Photo Festival, Pingyao China   SELECTED PUBLISHING 1974         Into The Hollow Mountains – a Portrait of Fitzroy 1981         A Day in The Life of Australia 1988         The Thousand Mile Stare 1990         Twenty Contemporary Australian Photographers 1992         Sites of the Imagination 1999         Waterproof : water photography since 1852 2003         Trace : Photos & Poetry (with Gregory Day)   SELECTED COLLECTIONS National Gallery of Australia; National Gallery of Victoria; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery; Phillip Morris Collection; Melbourne City Council; Waverley City Council; John Sands Collection; Charles Darwin University, as well as many public and private collections in Australia, USA, Malaysia and Czech Republic.