Rottnest Island from two perspectives

Updated

Creative photographer Jarrad Seng and renowned Dutch street artist Amok Island chartered a small plane over Rottnest Island to create a unique perspective on the rugged coastline of the iconic Western Australian destination.

Photographer Jarrad Seng and Artist Amok Island are two of the most successful young creative exports from Western Australia.

Still under 30, Mr Seng has worked on creative projects with music superstar Ed Sheeran and campaigns for Qantas and Converse.

Hailing from Amsterdam and Perth based, Amok Island is known for his large, nature-inspired murals on grain silos and has exhibited in more than 20 countries.

In their first collaboration together, their new exhibition 'Parallels' includes highly detailed photographs displayed side-by-side with the minimal, geometric paintings to emphasise their parallels.

"Rottnest Island is so beautiful from the sky with all the colours from the reef, the algae and coastline, it is just spectacular," he said.

"A lot of people think of Rottnest as just an island next to Perth where you can go for day, but it's got a really wild side to it which we really wanted to show."

The artists collaborated closely to capture the images.

"When you look at the works from distance, the differences just disappear," Mr Island said.

Although the processes are vastly different, the Amok Island believes paintings still retain the feel of the original photographs.

"The really unique thing about this series is that Amok Island and I have been involved in each other's process from the very beginning. When capturing the photographic imagery we would already be mindful of how it would translate into a more abstract form," Mr Seng said.

Amok Island had the idea to paint the aerial landscapes for many years but it took him a long time to develop a style to portray them in an abstract way.

"I had been doing quite a lot of research about different places around the world to paint the aerial views and Rottnest just stood out," he said.

"Because of the reef structure, a lot of really interesting patterns emerge. Limestone breaks off, it's overgrown by algae. It's hard to explain but it's like a colour explosion, it's hard to believe it's real. It's so vibrant and saturated," Mr Island said.

"We found areas with very different looks, the salt lakes have such bold colours with the pink and greens, it's hard to believe it is actually found there.

"Which was the idea we had in mind, to show another side of Rottnest ... that people don't recognise.

"It's very wild and the rough sea crashes against the reef. You have enormous areas of just white wash waves ... and the water goes all crazy in whirlpools

"The waves create colour, gradients and patterns which is very exciting to translate that in my style ... to find a half abstract half realistic view of it."

Topics: photography, rottnest-island-6161, perth-6000

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