Deep Down: Peacock Gallery Auburn

“Of increasing necessity is, as Rosi Braidotti flags, the need to engage with a “planetary, geo-centered” perspective… to establish proximity, map the links, the continuum of medianatures where the natural ecology is entirely entangled with the technological one”
– Jussi Parikka A Geology Of Media

What if you could enjoy the experience of natural tranquility beyond your screen? For Deep Down I built on concepts developed in my previous Solo exhibition ‘Deep Solitude’ at Archive Gallery in 2015, and my more recent soft sculptures ‘Mossys’ exhibited at Home@735 Gallery, 107 Projects and Zero Gravity Gallery.
Generally, these works are around 20 x 30 cm each, and require the viewer to pick up and listen to them quite closely. For Deep Down, I inserted the viewer inside this experience of re-created nature by blowing up the scale of the works to be around 200 x 170 cm each, which allowed viewers to sit within them like beanbags.

This work responded specifically to the neighbouring Japanese gardens on site, and the large Mossys were housed within a tented enclosed environment. I commissioned sound artist Matt Boyer to compose an original soundscape mixed with field recordings of the water and birds that live in the gardens. In addition, I was assisted by lighting artist Calum Young to create an evolving light show to artificially recreate the phases of the sun from sunrise to sunset within the environment. Finally, I projected a film of the garden’s pond water moving on the ground to help the viewer feel that they are submerged within the site itself (with many thanks to Mark Parry for the filming assistance).

The entire experience ran for cycles of 10 minutes, so the viewer was able to experience a simulation of a day in a fraction of the time. Analogous to scrolling through a friends profile on Facebook instead of seeing them in person, Deep Down allowed us to “catch-up” with nature when we don’t really have time. In an age where simulation and authenticity are blurred and technology purports to be just as good as the real thing; this imagined future environment aims to be simultaneously soothing and unsettling.

You can read the words of Kristina Tito and Luke Létourneau in the catalogue featured in the ‘Essays’ section of this website.

This work was presented at Peacock Gallery, Auburn from 4 May – 26 May 2019.

Image credits: Sarah Kukathas, Document Photography & Grace Kingston

Year2019