Making gaps between...

I've been away for a few days, presenting a paper at the AAANZ conference in Launceston, reporting on my current work in the IMAS space. I had the pleasure of convening a session on Drawing as a mode of thinking GEOcritically with fellow co-presenters Antonia Aitken from UTAS and Sarah Pirrie from the University of Charles Darwin. Our session explored how drawing is used within each of our practices as a key mode of engaging with place and as embodied experience. A huge thank you to Sarah who travelled all the way from Darwin and who made a wonderful contribution to our session.

This is what's been happening in and around the IMAS space over the last couple weeks...

These have moved off the wall in the last few days and are now occupying space out in the middle of the space, interacting with each other, hovering in the breeze.

 More of these have appeared in varying scales, along the window looking out on to Castray Esplanade. The tracing paper is also moving gently in the air conditioning with the layers underneath coming into and out of focus with the sigh of the wind.

The Aurora Australis departed last Friday for her next voyage into the unknown, leaving behind a Hobart shrouded in low lying cloud and light rain. Her orange girth beaconing in the grey haze.

We've also had a visit from the Royal Australian Navy, the HMAS Rankin arriving and then quietly disappearing beneath the waves.

Secret codes and hidden languages, the gaps between patterns of language and understanding... I recently saw an episode of the Secrets of Britain where they were talking about the people working out of Bletchley House on cracking the Enigma code on WWII. The code breakers were selected because of their knowledge of patterns of language. It got me thinking about my line of buoys and how I might arrange them on the floor in the space to free up some more room on my working trestles. They of course behave quite differently on the floor - interacting with their new horizon.

Coincidentally over the weekend there was an article about British Intelligence's employment of code breakers with dyslexia (see here) because of their increased ability to recognise patterns within language, patterns that non-sufferer's normally overlook. It appears once again that the gaps between are important...at least if you're trying to crack a code....perhaps the coded visual language of drawings and objects.....

knots

fathoms

assumed positions

anchors

This work has been moving around the gallery floor. A bit like a map with a key/legend and plotted points of interest...cairns of discovery, stepping stones, pebbles...