Landscape 5: Labyrinth1990
The work was composed of caged stone; metal mesh; timber; sheet metal; paving stone; turf, chalk; the Fibonacci series; the promenade
Comprising four interactive components:
1.Tower1: Ziggurat engulfed tower
2.Stone labyrinth
3.Tower2: Fallen tower
4.Stone platform
A contemporary archaeology discoursing the contradictions and paradoxes of our society, its systems, and beliefs. Acknowledged is the weight of the past, and the expedience of the present and the paradoxical and simultaneous processes of evolution and revolution. Explored is the fine line between protection and aggression, freedom and bondage, ideology and dogma, surface and substance.
There was an incompleteness in some aspect of each component. This was an ambiguous growth/decay factor in the ziggurat-tower; the fallen tower and vacant stone platform are ambiguously incomplete and contingent, while the fallen (treelike) tower portends a potential regeneration; the absence of the usual circle that protects or encloses the centre of the stone labyrinth places a womblike inscription onto the slope. The caged stone gestures to expedience and speed, rather than the careful constructions of a past era.
The installation was impossible to take in from one perspective. The work had to be traversed in order to experience its potential as a 'whole'. The promenade provided the mechanism of rite of passage from 'fragments' toward an ephemeral and conceptual completion. Thus the experience and imagination of the viewer were a necessary component to complete the work. A momentary gesture toward an overview was offered on national television. The work was videoed from above by helicopter and broadcast nationally on Ch 9's Sunday afternoon arts program during the Triennial. This national broadcast constituted the performative element of the work.
