Over their weekly conversation in an inner-city cafe, photographer Michael Wee persuaded his friend, painter and writer Tom Carment, to embark on some walks into ‘wild’ Australia. Inexperienced long-distance bushwalkers, Michael and Tom learned en route as they traversed hot, rainy, snow-covered, and bushfire-blackened terrain. Alongside Michael’s haunting, dramatic photographs, and Tom’s delicately observed watercolours and drawings are stories of each walk, interweaving history with anecdote, humour with observation. Seven Walks is the companion book to their adventures and captures the feeling of heading out on foot along a narrow track, into a beautiful landscape.
‘Tom Carment’s writing, like his art, seduces quietly: austere, highly articulate, always fresh, with a dry sense of the absurd. In this calm, modest register he commands great territories.’ —Helen Garner
There's more information and stunning page spreads available on the Seven Walks website
Tom Carment's work is on show at the Art Gallery of NSW (as part of Drawing Out: Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2014) until Monday January 26
Read more about Tom's work in these wonderful reviews in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Bragg, or listen to the podcast of Tom talking to Geraldine Doogue on ABC Radio National
