Visual Arts / The Edge Cannot Hold, paintings by Alexander Boynes. At Civic Art Bureau, Melbourne Building, Civic, until June 29. Reviewed by KERRY-ANNE COUSINS.

This body of work by Canberra artist Alexander Boynes is inspired by a famous mystical poem by the Irish writer WB Yeats.

Yeats was writing in 1921 in the aftermath of World War I and the scourge of the Spanish flu that followed. Yeats saw in the horror of this world catastrophe the destruction of certainty and the beginning of a new world order of chaos. The poem notes – Things fall apart: the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

In this apocalyptic vision of Yeats, Boynes sees change and chaos not among nations as much as an environmental catastrophe that will envelop Creation.

Boynes writes that his practice investigates the environment and social impact of fossil fuel extraction in Australia – how it has shaped our landscapes, communities and how it will impact on our future.

The body of work explores this theme through a series of wood panels using a combination of ink, acrylic and enamel.

The artist whose practice includes paintings, photography and print has used a computer-controlled drawing machine to draw his images. These images and surfaces are further enhanced by ink washes and spray paint.

The first impression of these works is one of immediacy. They have the impact of contemporary news media images as they resemble large digitised newspaper photos blown up to reveal a pixelated surface.

In each of the 12 works there is a figurative element usually emerging from the background. These figures are dressed in high-visibility gear that renders them anonymous; at odds with the environment in which they find themselves.

They are interlopers, symbols of the industrialised world and emerge half realized like ghostly apparitions from a background created from layers of paint and ink. Colour is restricted to atmospheric washes that highlight certain aspects of the images. The reds and oranges heighten the sense of a conflagration while the bands of hi-vis yellow suggest hazards ahead.

The background smog that cloaks the figures could represent smoke or equally acid rain or carbon dust. In some of the works notably in the large four panel work Vapour and in another work called Pyrocene, the figures appear against a glowing inferno of a forest rendered in red and orange fluorescent colours. Are they firefighters called to this inferno – the result of climate change? Or do they represent workers in the fossil fuel industry that have been at work in the forest? An industry that the artist believes profits from the use of the world’s resources while also slow to implement change.

The works in this exhibition represent the artist’s view that art can articulate change and be a vehicle for change. As Boynes writes – even if the centre cannot hold, we can still choose how to rebuild the edge.