(IN)SCAPE
A PAINTING + FILM INSTALLATION
Expanded Architecture at The Rocks : Reverse Projections was an artist residency program, exhibition and symposium. A project of the Sydney Architecture Festival 2013, the works were presented in a one night only exhibition in November.
Spatial art practitioners made collaborative works during a one month residency in a heritage listed building at 136-138 Cumberland Street, The Rocks, a heritage-rich inner-city harbour suburb. .
Lymesmith's installation reconstituted the materiality and patina of The Rocks to produce a fictional archive of colour history; of coloured scrapes, films, flakes, substances, layers and stains to re-present and condense The Rocks' chromatic ambiance. The installation invites consideration of the heritage range of colours, their thickness and materiality, associations with historic fabric, cycles of care and neglect, and future application in the city. It provided a window into the colourful roots of the colony, and suggested a possible future for this very earth-bound and resonant colour palette.
On opening night hors d'oeuvres resembling a cross section through many layers of coloured paint (magnified x1000) were served to visitors.
A parallel film installation by Michael Tawa showed juxtapositions of moving images to produce abstract interpretations of past uses of the building as a Drapers shop, and as a dwelling for Maori whalers. Film sequences extended the chromatic research by Lymesmith, providing a virtual or ephemeral parallel to the material catalogue and archive.
“The first work was in the front room, the shop, it was a mesmerizing strata of heritage shades of paint, paint coating twigs, timbers and tables that lay across the room, each revealing something in its surface, and each saying something about its past through its masks, through its own disguise.”
'(IN)SCAPE', Expanded Architecture, installation 1, detail
'(IN)SCAPE', Expanded Architecture, installation 1
Curators
Sarah Breen Lovatt and Dr Claudia Perren
Artists + Architects
Zanny Begg, Ross Anderson, Simon Weir, Kevin Liu, Edward Leckie, Lindsay Webb, Rachel Couper, Ivana Kuzmanovska, Kate Dunn, Michael Tawa, Lymesmith \ Sonia van de Haar, Cristina Garduo Freeman, Antonia Fredman, Vicki Leibowitz