“Skiing is the best way in the world to waste time,” says free-style skier Glen Plake. Or is it more than that? Zoe Young, who grew up on this very road in the Snowy Mountains, asks in her latest series as the official artist-in-residence at Thredbo Alpine Resort: What is the Alpine Way? What defines mountain culture?
Blending personal history and collective memory, Young’s work spans four generations of her family. Through a series of figurative, still life, and landscape paintings, she collages time and place, distilling folklore, family rituals, and village life.
Young captures the essence of Australia’s alpine landscape—the Snowy Mountains in a sunburnt country—while exploring the European diaspora on Ngarigo land, where Alpine traditions and contemporary life intersect.