Head studies: Preparatory study for 'Nothing's as precious as a hole in the ground'

Rob Hirst (bottom left) and Jim Moginie (top right) began jamming together at school in 1972. They later enlisted Peter Garrett (top row, second from left ) as vocalist and performed as Farm until 1976, when they changed their name to Midnight Oil. They recorded their first two albums in 1978 and 1979, by which time guitarist Martin Rotsey (top left) had joined them. Bass player Bones Hillman (bottom row, second from right) joined in 1987. From the outset, the Oils' songs aggressively addressed environmental and social concerns. Tracks on Diesel and Dust (1987) were about land rights, for example; and the song 'Blue Sky Mine', from Blue Sky Mining (1990), is about the thousands of deaths attributable to the blue asbestos mined in Wittenoom, Western Australia, for many years. eX de Medici's commissioned portrait of Midnight Oil references this activism in multiple ways, including its title (a line from 'Blue Sky Mine'), its setting (the now defunct Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu National Park), and de Medici's use of a pigment extracted from mangrove bark she'd collected in the Northern Territory. For the individual portraits, de Medici worked from sketches based on photographs taken at gigs and at a studio session in Sydney. The Gallery acquired this work and nine other preparatory drawings along with the finished portrait in 2001. In 2002, the artist gifted to the Gallery the illustrated diary which documents the portrait's creation.

Commissioned with funds from the Basil Bressler Bequest 2001
© eX de Medici