ffffff: Introduced Birds

Introduced Birds consists of a series of interlinked environments that conjure up a nervous tension and feeling of barren isolation. Visitors become performers are as they move through three minimalist environments, activating the space with movement and sound. Their psychological terrains tap into an undercurrent of individual alienation and anxiety symptomatic of the mechanisms of contemporary socialisation.

A large, dark, faceted form, reminiscent of a shelter or bunker, inhabits the first space. It has been constructed from triangles cut out of vinyl records. The original record labels, with obsolete band names and forgotten song titles remain fully legible. These discarded efforts and ambitions, now relegated to a discarded medium, have been transformed into a feeble barrier for anything that might seek shelter there. Adjacent to this form, a dislocated arm from record player sits alone; beckoning. A simple touch to the pointed tip of the stylus sends out a rolling thunderous bass tone from below the mound of fractured records; layering further tension into the space.

Situated further into the gallery are a cluster of hollow geometric forms, which blend into the white gallery walls and mimic the odd angles of the space. Audience members can crawl into these structures, whose dark interiors quickly close in around them. These minimal isolation chambers can be simultaneously contemplative and claustrophobic, offering an introspective experience and the opportunity to contemplate the social forces at work behind our every action.

Walking into the final space, each footstep falls with a crunch onto a large mound of dirt. The soil that makes up this heap has been collected from schools and now defunct children's homes and ritualistically deposited in the space at the exhibition opening. Photographs of the soil source locations line the walls at kneeling height, thus completing this archaeology into New Zealand's historical structures of socialisation.

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