Untitled
Constructions/After Image. 1994
The images are of full scale works and marquettes made during the development
of a work to be installed in the atrium of the building for the opening
of the Casula Powerhouse. 1994.
The work was to be constructed/woven from fine pure cotton as a three
dimensional gridded form that would float above the atrium. 3 by 2 by
2 metres.This constructioin follows a general tendency in my work to
be site specific.
The Casula Powerhouse started its modern life as a coal burning electricity
generation plant. Obsolete before it was completed, its placement right
on the banks of the Georges River near Liverpool NSW, west of Sydney,
a very long way from coal supplies was breathtaking in its lack of vision.
The liverpool train line was constructed to supply the coal for the
generator which in turn was supplying the growing Liverpools electricity
supply. The growth of the area outstripped the supply potential. The
power plant was decommissioned and partly scrapped and was a great site
for some general 'vandalism', before its 'Lazerus like resurrection'
as an Arts Complex.
see: Between the train and the river. when the
train gets in.
Encountering
the building for me is like encountering all over again a number of
modernist idealisms, for example form and function is implicit in its
post Gropius utilitarian architecture.
It is also possible to encounter the facade and its 'other side' simultaneously.
or the almost evangelical religious fervour that underpins 'progressive'
modernism, that which it seeks to deny religion and 'nature'.
I
think it was an aphorism of Theo Doesenberg that said "The square shall
replace the cross."
The Work untitled construction/after imagefloats in the air above
you.
It is constructed to leave an out of focus visual afterimage, a 'ghost'
cross embedded, implicit in the form