Dave Laslett has won the 2025 Don Dunstan Foundation Award at the South Australian Living Arts (SALA) Festival for his show LANDWORKS – a primary collection show featuring a series of tableau photographic works created from living and working in the South Australian outback for the past 10 years.
The award, including $2000 prize money, is given to an artist whose work explores social justice themes which align with the objectives and priorities of the Don Dunstan Foundation including homelessness; climate justice; Aboriginal empowerment and reconciliation; democracy; or Don Dunstan’s legacy.
LANDWORKS speaks to concepts of industrialisation and consumption, attention, nihilism through to realism, and despair through to hope.
Dave says that he likes to explore “ultimate contrast”.
“A lot of my work is the artificial with the natural or what people classify as ‘ugly’ with beautiful. It’s kinda like a rock song that’s really upbeat that has really depressing words. It’s the same kind of thing. It’s like ultimate contrast,” he said.
The main message behind all of his work is that “we are not apart from the land: we are a part derived of the land”.
Dave describes himself as a “land-based artist” which means that he spends a lot of time alone walking the landscapes of the Flinders Ranges.
Dave’s old lounge room – a section of bushland just off the road where he lived in and out of for a couple of years – is depicted in Where I Lived What I Lived For (above).
“[English sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist] Andy Goldsworthy talks about it when you first encounter an area that he’s gonna work within and it’s like someone you’ve never met before. You don’t know how to approach it, you don’t know how to engage with it. You don’t understand the language of it. But then over time, you begin to familiarise yourself with it,” he said.
And it’s the process itself that is most important to him, rather than the finished works.
Dave says about the process behind Sunrise (below): “So there’s one work in the show, it’s a constructed tree, so it’s made of three different trees. But it looks like one tree. And then it’s got like a warm orange light and a fire underneath it. In the background on the ridge, there’s an actual fire. And that’s shot over three months. So it’s actually like you’re in the heat, the dust, the storms, the wind, the rain and it’s all, it’s a specific type of photography where you hand paint all those different elements together. So it’s not just one photo it’s actually about 650 photos over three months,” he said.
Dave says that sustainability is central to both his life and his work.
He lives off-grid, with mindful use of rainwater and using solar to charge his production lights, cameras, and electric chainsaws.
He builds and maintains the structures for his work using scrap and locally scavenged materials.
“I’m caretaking out here [in the Flinders Ranges] so I remove wheel cactus and paddy melon and all those kind of obnoxious weeds. But then instead of just burning them, I use them within the works and then I burn them,” he said.
Some of these paddy melons were used in Look What They Made You Give (below) to speak directly to the cost of inattention and consumption.
And once he’s finished with the work, the structures, plants and plastics are either burnt, recycled or regrown.
Dave said he was “extremely honoured” to receive the Don Dunstan Foundation Award.
“It’s extremely meaningful for me to be involved with an individual who used his skills to develop and create spaces for people without place and stood up for the minority in the face of majority, creating such an impact on the country and the people who inhabit it,” he said.
You can read more about Dave’s work on his website.
