For Britannia (P & O Cruises) PAA was approached to commission a series of ‘landscapes of the mind’ for the VIP and dining rooms. For this project we decided to explore the two oldest traditions of landscape painting in the world: Australian Aboriginal rock painting and ground designs.

The Aboriginal artists chosen came from one of the most remote regions in Australia, the Central Desert. We liked the notion that whilst much of Australia is covered by deserts that appear empty and inhospitable to the unacquainted, to the Aboriginal tribes who know and inhabit these ancestral lands they are rich in physical sustenance and infused with spiritual meaning.

PAA thus built a story exploring commonalities between two disparate traditions for passengers to make new connections:- notably how both reduce something complex into something simple and both are primarily concerned with the evocation of a feeling rather than the replication of reality.

Pictured here, we have also created a contemporary version of Chinese ‘shan shui’ mountain scapes, working with Chinese artists to create contemporary landscapes across a diverse variety of media in ink and mineral pigment works.