strata - rookwood 2016

details

:::: finalist, HIDDEN 2016 - Rookwood Cemetery Sculpture Walk, Sydney (click)
:::: awarded High Commended
:::: media - non organic household rubbish salvaged from the streets; barrier system; mound of dug earth; rolls of turf
:::: dimensions variable

notes

:::: the rectangular hole meets the standard dimensions of contemporary graves dug at Rookwood Necropolis
:::: the hole was dug with the actual machinery used for the digging of graves
:::: the crisp new grave was dug within the context of the heavily weathered and dilapidated Victorian section of Rookwood
:::: the grave was orientated 90 degrees to the alignment of the entire field of graves within the given context, to symbolically
     highlight the great discord between contemporary attitudes and ways of being, and those of the not so distant past

artist statement

The pit holds bare the actualities of our ways … stuff ... owned and thrown ... all now of equal value ... unprejudiced worthlessness of cost and consequence.

Our collective behaviour in having become obedient mass consumers, appears to have been teased and ushered ... oh in so very slow and deliciously clever ways.

Neither mass production nor mass disposal can possibly come free from the shackles of supremely rational and inevitable consequence.

critical response

“A very strong conceptual piece with both many literal and metaphorical layers. This work provokes the visitor to go beyond a mere passive viewer experience and to more actively engage with a whole range of ideas around consumption, excess and death as the great equaliser.”

public statement on behalf of the judging panel, Judith Blackall, Katherine Roberts, John Monteleone and Cassandra Hard Lawrie, (click)

acknowledgments

I wish to thank Cassandra Hard Lawrie, the Curator of HIDDEN 2016 and the team at Rookwood, for enabling the work to be realised in the fullness of its intent ... with particular thanks to Dean and Murray who undertook the excavation.