My Grandfather, Gareth Morse, or Gik, as we call him, is a Welsh-Australian landscape painter. 

When I was a kid, and when my brothers and cousins were all still kids, he would take us down to the river. Walking down East St, down to Beach St, crossing between the bridges and up along Riverside Rd. I don’t really remember what we did, toddling along in the pram, eating cheese and crackers. He sketched and probably talked to us at length about semiotic theory and painting and photography and art and life and how it’s all reflective of each other, the same conversations I have with him now

Gik was also an art critic for ‘The Australian’ from ’78-83 and presented Kaleidoscope on ABC Radio from ’78-81 and was a senior lecturer/head of department at what is now Edith Cowan University from ’75-89. His works, large in scale, heavily textured and full of superb colour are for me, somewhat quiet, profound reflections on space, land, memory, experience and the vastness of country. 

I have an inherent familiarity with the space between the bridges. It’s where I took my first digital photograph, around 2006, a long exposure at dawn of the traffic bridge. A space where I grew up, witness the bilya changing throughout the seasons and the developments around it. The bridges are a place which are not a destination, rather a place of constant change, crossing and movement. 

When I visited Gik earlier this year, at his new home in Coogee, he asked me if we could listen to some music, specifically Vexation 47 by Erik Satie. A very intense, impassioned and rather hard of listening piece of music. We sat in silence as Satie’s 1:40 composition played out and he asked me at the end “Now Dunc, what is the minor key of photography?”

While making the images for this show I reflected on my grandfathers work and perhaps for the first time saw his way of thinking and seeing in my own imagery. Instead of looking for the obvious amongst the familiar I searched for the minute details which bring us notions of memory and experience, I reflected deeply as this work came together and attempted to find a minor key. 

'A Resonance' was on exhibited in November, 2021 at the Republic of Fremantle for Fremantle Biennale.