Alma mater
2011/2012POP Gallery, Brisbane - 6th - 19th November 2023
In the leafy southern suburbs of Brisbane behind a screen of weed-entangled fencing lies and abandoned education campus. The former Queensland College of Art (1974-2000) is dominated by an ensemble of distinctive multi-level rough-cast concrete structures clustered around both open air common and connecting spaces. Brute concrete blinds adorn some buildings protecting against the fierce subtropical sun. Weathered signage indicates directions to the various studio destinations: sculpture, ceramics, painting, commercial art, printmaking, illustration, photography, interior design, graphics etc. Arrows direct the user and oddly allude to the hierarchical structure of the creative arts. Vegetation flourishes in unkempt gardens softening the concrete with a shimmering verdant green, an effect that threatens to reclaim the place.
For ten years this site sat in limbo, local residents challenging plans for a broad-acre housing estate, arguing there would be adverse impacts on existing property values. Through this lengthy process the site was secured from vandalism with regular security patrolling. As the proceedings drew to a close with demolition eminent, the patrolling ceased and the site was left to the graffiti taggers and vandals that descend on such abandoned places. In no time the empty student-less corridors, stairwells and classrooms were radically transformed into a lurid zone of spray can expression and shattered glass.
The exterior images in the series of photographs were made first when the site was relatively secure. The interior images followed once the perimeter had been breached and trespass made possible. They are intended to operate in paired groups to emphasie their binary qualities, with a few works standing alone.
Returning to this significant site in my own journey as an artist, after 35 years, my initial response was of the Lilliputian compression that happens with the elapsing of time. Standing and walking through spaces where I had stood and walked so many years before created a powerful nostalgic flood of responses in the silence and vacancy of the place. Following this was a sense of the profligate waste that abandoning such infrastructure represented when government policy betrays community values. Bristling with despondency and despair, the site is emblematic of the collapse many see occurring in the cultural mission of our society.
With this body of work I am continuing my interest in the human dimensions we invariably find inscribed in the built environments that we create and occupy, and the ability for these environments to transmit truths beyond their materiality. The biographical element of this series can be viewed as a meditation on my own existence and mortality.
