VACUI

2013

Stainless steel dinghy, unrefined salt.600x350cm

 

 

The installation, produced in collaboration with artist Riza Manalo, was located within a light well inside the ADFA building, throughout the course of the Palimpsest #9 Biennale in Mildura. In its centre a small rowing boat was placed and its sides were filled in with evenly distributed and levelled salt, that rose to just below the rim of the dinghy, which barely emerged from the salt, just its outline and the onoccupied concave space of the hull was visible. In an adjacent room, a video projection of the sparkling waters of one of the salt lakes twinkles with stars and flashes of seemingly cosmic emanation.the piece is expression of movement through the essential elements of water and light. Just as the river levels of the Murray Darling fall, causing the rise of salt deposits, the installation suggests the solidification of fluidity; a boat, human artefact that operates within abundant quantities of water, becomes a void in a crystallized landscape, unable to move in a liquid environment, and becomes a static hole that becomes ruin, immersed in salt, that slowly consumes the hull.

 

 

1) View of VACUI from the entrance.

2) The light well had two taps on opposite sides of the space; an extra element that ramificates the work

3) the video is a fixed shot of the slow moving waters of Lake Ranfurly, hit by reflections of sunlight.