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The art of Robyn Backen
The art of Robyn Backen resides in the sphere of transition, inhabiting thresholds between the elements of land, water and air; between the human body and technology; randomness and pattern. Her sculptures, Weeping walls, 2000, create the gateways of departure at Sydney International Airport. With the memory of morse code messages pulsing in fibre optic light, they repair the emotion of separation as passengers disappear behind the glass walls and are woven into the sculpture. The Archaeology of Bathing, 1999, delineates the transition of Sydney Harbour to its shore at Woolloomooloo Bay and alludes to the territory between memory and the present. The work measures the portions cut from the Harbour waters and bound into the private baths begun by Mrs Biggs in 1834. Like an instrument of meditation, the sculpture receives the pattern of tidal movement, simultaneously invoking the presence of the baths and releasing the waters from this enclosure. Catching ... the Harbour reflects a collaborative process between Robyn Backen, Australian Museum scientists and exhibitions staff who assisted in its realisation. The process is itself an expression of transition between the ideas of science and art. The collections are articulated in shifts of time, scale and perception; they are phrased in reversals. Light emanates from exhibits; X-ray photographs follow a display of specimens; and the necks of the periscopes stretch to retrieve sight of the harbour - the sandstone walls of the Museum replacing headlands. Contemporary and archival films are projected on a split screen, joined by a seam of text, as language appears to bind our comprehension of the physical world. The installation, Drop, incorporates canoes interwoven with fibre optics - the materials of contemporary communication. To the colonists, the Aborigines' canoes seemed to sketch an agile line between the Harbour's water and the fires they carried on board. In Drop, the canoes appear to have fallen through the netting of optic fibres; the lines of light rise from them, weightless and metaphysical.
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