Out of the Sea

Curated by Leonie Matthews

27th Feb - 24th Apr, 2021
Midland Junction Arts Centre

Featuring:

SpatialCo (Leonie Matthews, Peter Hill & Fergus Egan)
Emerald Wise
Tom Allum
Beth George 
Kira Jovanovski
Matt Slocomb



Immeasurable Voids: Emerald Wise and Tom Allum

Emerald worked with sound artist Tom Allum to fill the immeasurable voids left by the point cloud scanning of Canal Rocks. Voids that were mapped across the gallery floor. Voids that could only be filled by another scan - another’s eyes… or ears.

Each void on site became the set-out point for a sound mapping to take place. Sounds composed through extraction, erasure, void, into a chant that hummed between a series of columns – creating a spatial distortion within the gallery. Between them, through repetition and resonance, the momentary called to the eternal, echoing the vital scream of the site. On each plinth: an abstraction of the scan, an alteration to scale, or a material quality of site was presented in voids both real and drawn. Each explored the space between, the field - the place of presumed ‘nothingness’ - that scaffolds the entangling of our worlds.

Out of the Sea: Curator's Statement

In March of 2020, we (SpatialCo) returned from Yangon to a changed world. We self-isolated at Quindalup. Regional borders emerged by the time we did, and, unable to see family or friends, we took solace by the sea, and began to scan Canal Rocks. It became our muse.

The use of 3D point clouds for visualisation is an emerging field, and we have always wondered: what else, what more, can be done with them? We developed a framework for a collaborative exhibition, sharing the scanned data with artists and makers in other places, where they too were isolated and taking their troubles to their respective seas.

Each has responded to the work, variously through sound, drawing, and installation - some have visited Canal Rocks, others never have. All used the data as a space into which dreams, imaginings, and mythologies of place unfurled.

In transporting a place as two- and three-dimensional data, we have engaged with the isolation and digitally collapsed distances of this time, allowing all contributors to meet at Canal rocks and bring their imaginations to it. The collective work of “Out of the Sea” talks of fascination, fear, longing, dimensions, distance, presence and absence.

For work by all of the artists please visit the MJAC online gallery.