Timber, aluminium, EVA foam

Approx 3m x 2m x 2m

Airspace Gallery, Marrickville, 2024

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Europeans considered Australia terra nullius when they arrived, and power has subsequently been accumulated by those who claimed, explored, mapped, politically organised, transformed and consumed the landscape in various ways.

 

Entitlement explores themes of landscape colonization, loss and disempowerment, as well as the assumed right to own and dominate land, hold title deeds. I have been exploring these ideas through sculpture for quite a few years: they were originally born out of a fascination with science fiction films that used computerised topographic terrain mapping to visualise the surface of strange new worlds, as well as that of our own. It became increasingly apparent however that while such mapping techniques are extremely effective at representing three-dimensional topography on a two-dimensional surface, such reductive processes lose all connectedness, intimacy and engagement with the very landscapes they claim to represent. It occurred to me that the lost connections, histories, and meanings associated with Australian landscapes might be made more salient by exploring their absence, and particularly in the case of Entitlement, through the amplification of the sculpture’s negative spaces and through the disintegration of its topography.