Magic dirt (2014)

Sculptural and audio installation: Paper, cardboard, foamcore, adhesives, spray paint, plinths, audio soundscape (in collaboration with Mieko Suzuki). 1:1 scale models, dimensions variable.

‘Magic dirt’ is a sculptural and audio installation that explores how stereotypical representations of The Central Australian Desert might resonate with contemporary realities. As a place at the heart of national mythologies and internationally reproduced cultural clichés, Central Australia is more familiar to many through Australian films than through actually being there. Through such representations, it oscillates between the post-apocalyptic, desolate landscapes of Mad Max and the ominous emptiness of Wake in Fright, Evil Angels and Wolf Creek. The installation ‘Magic Dirt’ reflects on how such preconceptions are complexly intertwined with experiences of journeying to the desert in a contemporary context. Developed while artist-in-resident at Watch This Space in 2013, the installation explores how my journey to Central Australia was affected by these preconceptions and shifted by my experience on site. Referencing my wanderings through Alice Springs and the surrounding desert, ‘Magic Dirt’ reflects on the more peripheral accumulations, narratives and diversions between objects and sounds encountered on site, in dialogue with familiar filmic representations of the desert.

Mixed by sound artist Mieko Suzuki, the soundscape weaves field recordings collected from the desert with samples from Mad Max, Wolf Creek, Wake in Fright and Evil Angels. Displayed on plinths like museum dioramas, the paper model sculptural reconstructions draw on some of the detritus found on site, merging these fragments with preconceptions of the desert. Presented together as a sculptural and audio reconstruction, the installation suggests an experience of Central Australia that ambiguously collapses representations and realities into alternate narratives of place.

‘Magic dirt’ was exhibited at Craft Victoria in 2014 and at Watch This Space, Alice Springs in 2015.