2006

pre-loved and deconstructed birdcages, light, sound and video

Lighting: Phil Lethlean

Screen graphics: Jason Briede

Photography: John Best

This exhibition was the second iteration of work made from my collection of pre-loved and deconstructed bird cages investigating ideas of freedom (and sacrifice) versus containment, within a structured paradigm. This line of thought commenced in 2004 when I was invited to create an installation as part of the Post Office Installation Series staged at the old Castlemaine Post Office in 2005.

Curator, Dr Louisann Zahra-King saw the original exhibition and invited me to work in the perfectly square gallery at RMIT. Here I could play with the regularity of the space, which enabled me to construct a continuous city of dreams composed entirely of shadows. Shadows that consumed and released the viewer as they circumnavigated the space causing visiting Head of the School of Art, Otago Polytechnic, Bridie Lonie, to say she felt as though she ‘had been consumed by a Piranesi’.

At the end of the exhibition, the work was dismantled. All that remained was the photographic documentation and a series of photographs of shadows that inspired a series of prints, Unresolved Architecture of Heart shown in 2007 as part of For Every Bird, [MARS] Gallery.
Greer Honeywill

Into a Mirror Darkly

Curator: Louiseann Zahra

RMIT School of Art Gallery, Melbourne

20 August-22 September 2006