A PROVISIONAL LANDSCAPE

ANCA Gallery, Canberra. (Australian National Capital Artists Inc)

Becky Gibson and Nina Juniper

5th-23rd February 2020

A Provisional Landscape explores the current Australian built environment and the frenetic rate of change and transitory nature of our everyday surroundings. Construction is a constant—cityscapes undergoing rapid and relentless redevelopment and spatial transformation. Everywhere there are labourers in high-visibility vests carrying signs and brightly coloured cones, stalled traffic as backing trucks dump materials or load rubble, pedestrian flows obstructed by barricades. Everywhere, plywood false walls, grids of steel reo-bar and buildings shrouded behind blue-green mesh or encased in scaffolding, like cocoons and exoskeletons waiting to be shed. And shadows slung across it all as towering cranes swung prefabricated concrete slabs into place. We live in cities clad in temporality, but alive with animate compositions.

Through the mediums of painting and printmaking, Becky and Nina contemplate our constructed worlds and play with the elements commonly associated with building and construction. Both artists respond to the material aspects of construction through different means whilst aiming to grapple with the meanings held within and implications of such landscapes. There seems to be no part of the major cities or outer reaches that avoid this - building sites define our landscapes whilst reshaping and altering them. This can resemble the ebb and flow of civilisation which has never been static – always in a state of flux between new and old; construction and demolition; occupied and empty. Becky and Nina work with these themes in mind and respond directly to the sites that symbolise these ideas. Taking building sites as a starting point, they aim to investigate the material and qualitative aspects of these spaces uncovering links between our physical surroundings and the collective consciousness they represent.

Photo credit: Brenton McGeachie