Artists share bushfire visions

The show, Reflection and Regeneration, highlights visions of the blazes that swept through Victoria's towns, and documents local communities' efforts to rebuild. It features photos taken as the fires raged, as well as those showing the blackened landscape and ravaged villages they left behind.

It also includes photographs, paintings and silkscreen prints depicting the continuing recovery of people and places hit by the bushfires.

Bushfire art 'will endure'

Victoria Police Commissioner Simon Overland, who opened the exhibition, said art would play a valuable role in explaining the fires to future generations.

"Long after the words and the video and everything else is gone, it's the art that will endure and tell the story of what happened in February last year," he said.

Bushfire survivor Fern Langmead, who lost her home in the disaster, said her photographs were a way of moving on.

"At that stage everything was just black, and it was very much an emotional time. It was just a bit of hope that life would return to the area."

The Black Saturday bushfires raged across Victoria on February 7 last year, killing 173 people, and leaving thousands homeless.


Reflection and Regeneration is on in the lobby of the World Trade Centre in Melbourne, until March 11.