|
Call Signs #7 was the last show I participated in at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces as a studio artist. The work was site specific in that it took advantage of the strong radio reception in the building.
The circuit is a design for an amplifier which broadcasts ABC radio when attached to an aerial. I discovered this accidentally while working in my studio when I touched the amplifier with the soldering iron while it was attached to a battery and it spontaneously started broadcasting.
Call Signs #7 offered solutions to a number of long-standing technical problems and introduced the first substantial elements of painting and drawing into the installation.
The copper scourer used in this case can be soldered and not only provided a secure support for the electronic components, it also acts as the negative rail of the circuit and has the advantage that these outputs can be inserted in any order. The negative lead for the battery is soldered directly into the scourer. The positive rail is composed of the dectorative features, the two needlelace trees. The speaker is also nestled in the object, attached by its magnet to the copper.
The aerial, a red wire, shadows the power line in the gallery wall which seems to amplify the reception.
The painted mountains and their more abstract rendition in the aerial return to the original motif of Call Signs, mapping imaginary space.
Call Signs is based on a map of recurring dreams which I drew up some years ago. It consists of a very large number of locations around the house and suburbs in Sydney where I grew up. The places are partly real with entries into others that are completely imaginary. They include for example a network of marshes in the heart of Paddington. Some of the places appear as they were in my childhood but no longer exist while some of the fictional places have changed over time. For exmaple, a remote beach beside the Harbour Bridge which used to be visited by whales and could only be reached by cutting through bush later developed a rough path, then a concrete footpath and finally acquired a busy kiosk overlooking the bay.
It was while I was at art college that, waking one morning, these separate locations spontaneously came together in a map. Trying to draw the map of course, proved impossible as one location overlayed another. However, in the format of Call Signs, using directional arrows, the narrative of Chinese landscape painting (see Call Signs #6) and sound to fill the distances, it becomes possible to draft this imaginary space. |
