Introduction I Visiting Information and Events I Room Guide I Further Reading

Laughter Uluru (Ayres Rock)/The Cathedral I
Tate © Estate of Michael Andrews

In 1983 Andrews fulfilled a longstanding ambition to visit Ayers Rock (known as Uluru to the aborigines) in central Australia. On his return to Norfolk, between 1983 and 1987, he made an ambitious series of large paintings of the Rock and the surrounding landscape. These paintings - a selection of which is shown here - were based on the numerous watercolours he made on the spot as well as on the hundreds of photographs he took.

As well as evoking its immense scale, Andrews's images of Ayers Rock anthropomorphise the features of the mountain. The title of Laughter Uluru (Ayers Rock)/The Cathedral I 1985 (no.77), for example, alludes to the connection suggested between the cave-like feature and a laughing mouth.

Andrews saw his journey to Ayers Rock as something of a pilgrimage and he was moved by its ancient aboriginal significance as a spiritual site. These spiritual connotations are conveyed in the way that the titles of the paintings refer to the Rock as a cathedral. Indeed, he described the various caves that mark the mountain as being like chapels. Confronted with its enormous presence, there is in Andrews's response to the mountain a sense of awe, reverence and an acute sense of personal insignificance. The diminution of self-obsession which Andrews had evoked in Lights received at Ayers Rock its ultimate confirmation. It is a realisation expressed in a hymn he knew from his childhood:

Rock of Ages cleft for me
Let me hide myself in thee

While at the Rock he gathered grasses and plants which he later used as stencils when applying spray paint. He also mixed soil taken from the site with paint, as can be seen in Permanent Water Mutidjula, by the Kunia Massif (Maggie Springs, Ayers Rock) 1985-6 (no.79).

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