Creating false memories for a place that never was (2016)
Installation views at BUS Projects, Melbourne. Mixed media sculptural and audio installation: Found wooden objects, pine, Tasmanian oak, balsa, bamboo, MDF, chopsticks, rocks, cotton, paper, cardboard, adhesives, acrylic paint and varnishes and audio soundscape (in collaboration with Mieko Suzuki). Dimensions variable. Photos: Matthew Stanton.
‘Creating False Memories for a Place That Never Was’ is a sculptural and audio installation that reflects on the relationship between fact and fiction in ongoing, stereotypical cultural representations of Australia. Referencing some of the strange souvenirs perpetuating such representations, the installation investigates how national and transnational, specific and generic narratives of place in Australia are often complexly intertwined. As a point of departure, the installation draws on a potentially fictional wooden mask found in a Melbourne souvenir shop and the ambiguous explanations about its origins. Tracing the path of these explanations, the installation uses the mask as a prop to investigate different possibilities of place, collecting stories and souvenirs along the way. Reconstructing these fragments into ambiguous sculptural and sound propositions that slip between fact and fiction, form and materiality, the installation draws on some of the confusions surrounding Australian cultural representations.