Last week, images from a series entitled, The Secret Life of Rust, went on display.

Ms Murray said that these images were borne of a renewed creative interest in her own backyard.

“I knew I wanted to harness my growing interest in the dynamics of texture and colour, but I also wanted to keep exploring the qualities and stories inherent in the simplest of objects that surround us.”

Having spent some time wandering with her camera on those rare winter days that the sun came out, Ms Murray developed a fascination with rust, in all its decaying, oxidising glory.

Though not exactly a revelation in an environment such as Lightning Ridge, Ms Murray was surprised to find that old car wrecks she had photographed years before appeared to have a renewed complexity.

“Traipsing around the opal fields, the collection emerged organically right before my eyes,’ she said.

As the series of images evolved, Ms Murray found her vision narrowed. She became fixated on the idea that rust is alive, its layers denoting the past, present and future.

“The layers of history and circumstance are woven into the interplay of colour and corrosion. The graphic strokes of the grinder against varying hues of vivid blue paint and intense ochre corrosion revealed the secret life of rust to me,” she said.

“If we go by the dictionary’s meaning of rust, it is a life of decline, decay and deterioration, but on closer inspection, rust can be seen as a continual process of growth and change, and for me, another opportunity to discover artistry in the everyday,” she concluded.

“A random midday stroll with a friend presented a rusty plethora of corroded storylines on some old fuel drums. Though grey and bleak at the time, one glance told me that it would only take the vivid afternoon sun to transform the mundane into abstract magnificence.”