Melbourne Fringe Festival
Installed at Abbotsford Convent, Abbotsford, Melbourne.
Remnants of space and Time. Archaeology of the Site was a process based performative installation which took place over four days at Abbotsford Convent and remained on site for a month. Tours of the work began at the site of Remnants and continued throughout the Convent grounds linking Remnants to past practices held within the precinct.
This work emerged from my connection with an archaeological dig in Launceston, Tasmania where the pegs and string used to map out the dig site echoed the patterns of the stars in the night sky above. Starmaps 2017.
The use of pegs and string in Remnants replicates the equipment I used to map the southern constellations onto the site of the dig in Launceston. The Archaeology of the Sky 2017. The web of lines that emerged from this process wrapped the site forming a taut network of lines.
In Remnants of Space and Time pegs and string were used to wrap and map a neglected space and its contents in the Convent grounds that were part of the infrastructure used by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd during the Convent years. Like an archaeological site the space holds the remains of a coal bunker, large boiler pipes from the Magdalene Laundries and bluestone cobbles quarried from Convent site in the 1800s.
Wrapping the site animated traces of the past and called attention to the layered history and stories of the Convent.
Tours of the work began at the site of Remnants and continued throughout the Convent grounds linking Remnants to past practices held within the precinct.
I wanted Remnants to glow in the dark (the string was pulled through glow in the dark paint) but due to unforseen light pollution this was not possible.
In order to honour the advertised ‘glowing work’ my studio at the Convent, which was the only dark space to be found became the site of the glowing work.
The tours culminated in the studio - viewers entered the pitch dark space, which was wrapped with glowing string that formed a taut network of lines defining the space. Wrapped Studio 2017
Remnants of Space and Time. Archaeology of the Site 2017
Builders line and metal pegs
