Creating false memories for a place that never was, part 2 (2016)
Installation views at BLINDSIDE, Melbourne. Mixed media sculptural and audio installation: Found wooden objects, pine, Tasmanian oak, balsa, bamboo, MDF, cotton, nylon, rocks, 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, Part 2’ is a sculptural and audio installation that explores the relationship between fact and fiction in Australian cultural representations. 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 confusingly intertwined for the tourist market. As a point of departure, the installation draws on a potentially fictional wooden mask found in an Australian souvenir shop and the ambiguous explanations about its origins. Tracing the path of these explanations, the investigation intersects with the musical group Deep Forest and their parallel stories of place, back to their popularity in Australia in the 90s. Reflecting on the strange transnational tribalism that the mask and the music weave, the installation presents sculptural and audio reconstructions that consider these confusing narratives and their relationship to contemporary Australia.
Inviting participants to respond to questions about their memories of Deep Forest music, the places it evokes and its popularity in Australia in the 90s, the installation’s audio soundscape reconstructs fragments of these interviews into a narrative about Deep Forest and Australia. Mixed by sound artist Mieko Suzuki in collaboration with Carly Fischer, the soundscape also includes samples of Deep Forest tracks, some of the original recordings they used, Deep Forest interviews and advertisements that used the music. Created in response to the soundscape, the sculptural components in the installation merge found and fabricated souvenirs and ephemera into reconstructed assemblages that slip between form and materiality, reflecting on some of the confused cultural representations emerging from the stories told. Shifting between specific and generic, cultural artefact and commodity, the sculptures act as ambiguous propositions for Australia past and present, reflecting on the perpetuation of fictionalised representations of place.