Public Artwork Commission -
Bundoora Decorative Arts Centre
Client: City of Darebin
Completed 2001
Featured in Architecture Australia magazine, September 2001.
This artwork explores the relationship between pre-European landscape and the landscape of today. European/Western patterns of spacial organisation are laid over the pre-European (Aboriginal) landscape of Darebin.
The pre-European landscape is depicted in the surveyor's language of cartography, with contours and rivers mapped onto a cartesian grid of latitude and longitude lines (the 600 x 600 panel grid). Some significant sites are also marked, such as the position of the original Homestead.
The Western pattern overlay is drawn from one of the ceiling patterns from the Homestead. Its rhythm, scale and location is defined by the cartesian grid. It continues across the landscape with a relentless perfection, regardless of contour, river or other features.
By application of this pattern we make reference to the cartesian system of spacial understanding, where no single point in space is inherently more important than any other point. It manifests itself in the planning of cities such as Melbourne and San Francisco through the application of an uncompromising, potentially infinite street grid to an unsuspecting topography.
A work in collaboration with artist Dale Stephens and architect Caroline Beach.