Business as usual...? 2026
Projection Room, Yarra Sculpture Gallery, 12 April - 2 May 2026
117 Vere St, Abbotsford 3067.
117 Vere St, Abbotsford 3067.
Business as usual…?, 2026. Installation, variable dimensions. Mixed media, including: ice, found steel grate, glass tank, marine braid, carabiners, monitors, projector, media players, particle board and black paint, 2 videos of 7.2 mins, 1 video of 3.2 mins duration, looping.
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Videos, on the screen and two monitors, show 74 photos of back of heads.
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Business as usual…? reflects concern regarding climate change. The installation comprises videos and a three-dimensional component with melting ice. There are 2 videos, one projected and one, duplicated, showing on monitors opposite each other. The individuals in the photographs are effectively looking away from the other end of the room where melting ice references glaciers and sea-ice melting. The installation offers a somatic engagement. The viewer may be implicated in the work through reflection, just as we are all implicated in climate change.
The videos feature 74 photos of back of heads. They suggest the way we look away from things and happenings that we want to ignore, avoid or not accept. This is sometimes a necessary self-preservation response to matters out of our control and sometimes when we don’t want to face reality. We hope ‘perhaps someone else will do something’; or ‘maybe they’ll go away’; or ‘maybe it won’t happen’; or ‘not my problem’; or ‘it’s too difficult’ and thereby we avoid having to act. If we turn away and are silent, are we not complicit in a sense?
These responses occur in regard to many things including: climate change; the homeless; domestic violence; starvation in countries such as Sudan; cruelty to animals caused by meat and dairy industry; acts of aggression; or genocide. This installation focuses on climate change. How can this be business as usual? We can act: email; protest; cajole; argue; to make change.
Video link: https://vimeo.com/1219706020?
(copy and paste the link)
Acknowledgements: many thanks to the 74 individuals who sat for photographs. Many thanks to Richard Woodall, for input and contribution to the installation and on-going moral support. Thanks to Julian Di Martino for his assistance with install.
48.8, 2025
Gallery 1, Yarra Sculpture Gallery, October 2025.
117 Vere St, Abbotsford 3067.
117 Vere St, Abbotsford 3067.
48.8 reflects my concern regarding climate change, highlighted by my own experience of bushfire in Cockatoo on Ash Wednesday. Top temperatures during major Victorian bushfires are revealed within the installation. 48.80 C is the temperature reached in Victoria on Black Saturday. Once molten lawnmower pieces reveal the intense heat of the Bunyip State Forest bushfires, 2019. This component references Lindy Lee’s Cosmos – a life of fire, 2014.
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The installation offers a somatic engagement and implication in the work through reflection may point to our own role in climate change. When the installation is entered or with a breeze the panels swivel, and reflections move across the floor and walls, animating the installation and creating a moving 'painting'. Transience of views and reflections point to the instability of the changing world and the planet’s future.
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Installation, variable dimensions. Mixed media: acrylic red, yellow and mirror panels, 2.4m x variable widths, black coated aluminium frame, marine braid, steel wire, aluminium crimps and swivels; found melted aluminium lawnmower parts, particle board and black paint.
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Installation detail: melted aluminium lawnmower parts
Installation detail: moving floor patterns.
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Installation detail: transient projected reflections
Installation detail: panel revealing temperatures during key Victorian fire events.
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Changing States, 2024
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'Seeing Light' Exhibition at 45 Downstairs, Flinders Lane, Melbourne
April 10-20, 2024. The installation Changing States, offers the opportunity to reflect on the impact of climate change, the opposing elements of fire and water and our dependant relationship with ice. Summer artic sea ice helps keep the planet cool, reflecting sunlight back into space. Nasa Climate Change information, indicates that it has been shrinking by 12.6% per decade. Glaciers, that provide water supply for millions, are retreating. Melted lawnmower parts from the Bunyip State Park bushfire, 2019, reflect local climate change impacts. Changing States, April 2024. Installation, dimensions variable. Mixed media: melted aluminium lawnmower, stainless steel stand, glass tanks, mirror, steel grill and tinted ice, 2 videos looped, 2 plinths, cotton fabric and charcoal drawing. Acknowledgements: stainless steel stand fabricated by Ben Storch to artist’s design; bushfire video sourced from Shutterstock (Operator 1975); and invaluable assistance from Richard Woodall. |
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Changing States Details
ice 1
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ice and tank with mirrored back -
(showing Scollo and Falk's paintings)
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ice 2
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melted aluminium lawnmower parts
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Your Melting, 2023
Your Melting, December 2023. Installation, dimensions variable. Materials: mylar, furniture blanket, concrete pavers, melted aluminium, stainless steel stand, 2 glass tanks, 2 mirrors, steel grill and ice. Acknowledgements: stainless steel stand fabricated by Ben Storch; and invaluable assistance from partner, Richard Woodall.
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Exhibition at TCB Gallery, Brunswick
December 7-17, 2023 and January 10-14, 2024 “….It was summer all winter. It was melting and it was going to melt. The last glacier fits in our warm hands.” Extract from “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier” by Craig Santoz Perez, 2016. The installation Your Melting, offers the opportunity to reflect on the passing of time, transformation of states and our vital interconnection with our planet’s natural systems: humans have a unique and dependant relationship with ice. Melting ice represents sea ice and glacier loss due to climate change. Summer artic sea ice helps keep the planet cool by reflecting sun back into space. Nasa Climate Change information,[2] indicates that it has been shrinking by 12.6% per decade and glaciers, that provide water supply for millions, are retreating and disappearing. Melted lawnmower parts from Bunyip State Park bushfire 2019, are a reminder of potential climate change impacts closer to home. It is acknowledged that materials used in the installation themselves contribute to global warming: mylar, steel, glass, concrete and ice.[3] [1] NASA Global Climate Change, Vital Signs of the Planet. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/. [2] Cement and concrete production contributes 7-8% of global CO2 emissions, according to the World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/11/near-zero-cement-concrete-net-zero/. |
Your Melting Details
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cement pavers on mylar
bushfire melted aluminium lawnmower parts
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Reflect, 2022
'Reflect' ice melt component
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Exhibited as part of VCA Master of Contemporary Art, Exhibition 2022.
Reflect offers four elements: ice melting into a mirrored glass tank on a mirror base with a polished steel support, creating reflections and shadows on the wall; two glass tanks with videos of water projected into them; and one floor projection. The viewer may be implicated through their reflection. Acknowledgement: Stainless steel support component fabricated by Ben Storch. The work reflects my interest in time, materiality, metaphysics and transformation and explores the interaction of light, surfaces, reflection and projection. The installation offers the opportunity to reflect on the passing of time, transformation and our vital interconnection with water – the essence of life. Reflect may prompt considerations of climate change. |
Summer Artic sea ice has been shrinking by 12.6% per decade according to NASA Global Climate Change, Vital Signs of the Planet. Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Extent | Vital Signs – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)
Click on the link below to view a time lapse of sea ice change:
Video: Annual Arctic Sea Ice Minimum 1979-2022 with Area Graph – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)
Click on the link below to view a time lapse of sea ice change:
Video: Annual Arctic Sea Ice Minimum 1979-2022 with Area Graph – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)
'Reflect' installation view. Image courtesy Kenneth Suico.
Mixed media, installation, variable dimensions, videos: 22 mins and 2 x 20 mins. Stainless steel support component fabricated by Ben Storch.
Mixed media, installation, variable dimensions, videos: 22 mins and 2 x 20 mins. Stainless steel support component fabricated by Ben Storch.
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Part installation view: video link
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detail - projection in glass tanks
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pond reflection: video link
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detail - ice melt, mirrors and tank
ice detail
Walking 2021
Walking is an ephemeral laneway intervention, comprising a video projected on a fabric screen which spans and blocks the lane. The video of a person walking is positioned so as to be superimposed on the real. The fabric moves with the breeze, creating an unstable image, suggesting the fallibility of memory.
The laneway is re‐imagined as a site of memory. The person walking away references the waves of communities who have passed through. The walker is of Italian descent and well remembers playing in this lane as a small child. There are few remaining of the migrants who came to Carlton in the 50s: most have moved away. The white fabric references the role many took up as tailors in Melbourne.
The work, with spatial and temporal dimensions, offers a re‐presentation of the real and a disconnect of time as well as space. The slippage between reality and the image emphasises this. Time is referenced through its ephemeral nature as well as the different layers of ‘time’ present (time of the walk and first video, time of the re‐presentation of the video, and time of viewing the work here).
The laneway is re‐imagined as a site of memory. The person walking away references the waves of communities who have passed through. The walker is of Italian descent and well remembers playing in this lane as a small child. There are few remaining of the migrants who came to Carlton in the 50s: most have moved away. The white fabric references the role many took up as tailors in Melbourne.
The work, with spatial and temporal dimensions, offers a re‐presentation of the real and a disconnect of time as well as space. The slippage between reality and the image emphasises this. Time is referenced through its ephemeral nature as well as the different layers of ‘time’ present (time of the walk and first video, time of the re‐presentation of the video, and time of viewing the work here).
'Walking' video still
click here to view walking : Vimeo
Which Reality? 2017
Materials/equipment: melting ice, glass container, two 40 x 50cms and one 40 x 90cms mirrors, TV monitor 32cms, camcorder, short throw projector and 47.5 minute video (looped), extract from 148 minute video.
This installation, includes melting ice, 3 mirrors, video playing on monitor, and a live projection across two walls. Various images and reflections can be seen simultaneously.
The installation considers the replication of images through providing a simultaneous experience of the image and the real and re-presentation through a video of the same object at a different times, and multiple reflections of both video and the live projection. The multiplication of images considers relationships between the image and reality which are of interest in a time where images, often distorted or altered, construct our world.
The installation’s disruption of perception may make the viewer aware of the act of looking, their ‘gaze’. Dissonance between the live projection, the real and the video reveals and highlights the time slippage present in the work.
This installation, includes melting ice, 3 mirrors, video playing on monitor, and a live projection across two walls. Various images and reflections can be seen simultaneously.
The installation considers the replication of images through providing a simultaneous experience of the image and the real and re-presentation through a video of the same object at a different times, and multiple reflections of both video and the live projection. The multiplication of images considers relationships between the image and reality which are of interest in a time where images, often distorted or altered, construct our world.
The installation’s disruption of perception may make the viewer aware of the act of looking, their ‘gaze’. Dissonance between the live projection, the real and the video reveals and highlights the time slippage present in the work.
'Corridor intervention' 2017
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Installation. Variable dimensions. Materials: white fabric, rope, bulldog clips, projector, laptop, digital image. |
In today’s ‘post truth’ world saturated with images, and ‘news’ that may or may not be fake, images and digital screens perversely seem to be treated as more real or more absorbing than the world around us. The work is created by hanging fabric across corridor, taking a photograph, downloading to laptop, projecting image onto the white material, placed precisely to continue the illusion of the real space. This iteration was one of a series of ephemeral interventions that consider time, the nature of reality and image and relationship between them in today’s world of virtual communication. The viewer might notice the dissonance between the two, and the impact of time and perhaps be aware of their act of perception.
Partial Views 2018 |
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As Merleau-Ponty said ‘mirrors are instruments of a universal magic that converts things into spectacle, spectacle into things, myself into another, and another into myself’. (Merleau-Ponty 1996). This work investigates the relationship between the work and the viewer and considers how it positions the viewer as an active perceiving body, creating awareness of perception.
‘Partial Views’ comprising thirteen hanging panels, 2.4 metres long and of varying widths from 10 to 40 centimetres. The panels are silver mirrored acrylic sheet, painted black on the reverse side. The hanging mechanism allows panels to turn freely and irregular spacing allows movement through the installation causing the panels to turn. |
