For the newly installed Annemarie’s Gate at Annandale, I was invited by the client to model my thinking on a 1990 sculpture, The Interior.
It was a challenge to move back into a forty something mindset, but the motivation to go back to the mindset of the worm and the wind, the wet and the dry, was still strong. That thinking was reinforced by the last year of living in the landscape at Wamboin. Recent experience would provide new lived imagery to mix with the younger one’s.
The Interior 1990 Wamboin
Doing commissioned work can take us away from our obsessions, liberate us from our immediate focus, often for the better.
It has been a joy to make this work. Discussions with the client through the process proved to enliven the work. Finding the balance between drawing shapes and letting shapes emerge through these processes was critical.
Finding structure and unity out of this activity created a lively tension. How far to go, how far is too far, how transparent should the material be allowed to become? The open-endedness of the process gave the work air and space.
Annemarie’s Gate in process
To add to these esoteric aspects, the wall needed a gate inserted which hinged and opened and closed and locked. Handles, hinges, locks that needed to be soundly made, that embodied the same unruly rules the cutting had employed.
Finally, the client requested an additional sound aspect to alert residents of visitors arriving.
The handle of Annemarie’s Gate
Annemarie’s Gate showing door knocker.
You don’t get better at driving mayhem with practice. It’s boring to know where you’re going.
This work will acquire more colour in the short term which will fade. The work’s ultimate decline however will be brought about by human will and other unforeseeable factors.
This work is a celebration of fifty years marriage of the clients.
Congratulations!