Stuart wrote about Alice Springs:

My first night in Australia, the land of my father, I stayed in a converted workers bunk house on a cattle station in the middle of that continent and outside of Alice Springs. It was black as pitch outside and the red earth was dry. I had closed the curtains when I switched on the light. Turning in for the night I opened the curtains to see the whole window covered with white moths attracted by what was the only light for miles. With the stars of the southern hemisphere as a background the moths created diaphanous forms against the moon.

Night Over Alice Springs marks Stuart's first excursion into historic photographic techniques.

About the Artist:

Since the 1960s Stuart has been an instrumental part of the land art movement. Unlike most of her contemporaries, however, who use the landscape as a canvas, Stuart has focused her attention on the effects humans have had on the environment and our relationship with it. She has also found it productive to travel extensively, working outside the United States often in more intact ancient landscapes. This brings to her work a deeper allegorical content. Stuart has worked frequently in Central and South America, Europe and Australia. Along with Nancy Holt, Mary Miss, Agnes Denes and others, Stuart is part of an under-represented group of women artists who are integral to the land art movement, yet are just now receiving the recognition they deserve. In addition to permanent, semi-permanent and sculptural work, Stuart is well known for her frottage drawings made directly from the landscape itself, as well as collages that utilize raw material found in the environment such as seeds and leaves. Though lesser known her photographic works have been a significant and essential part of her production for several decades.

Stuart's work has been collected by public institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Menil Collection, Houston; the Hammer Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles; the National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Australia; the Dia Art Foundation, New York; and the Tate, London.