choice mate – site 4

choice mate – site 4. The Incinerator Gallery, Mooney Ponds, VIC, 2016.

‘Choice Mate’ was selected as a finalist in 2016 Incinerator Art Award for Social Change.

“A memorial to human/landscape interaction, utilising notions of impermanence, disintegration and archive to challenge assumptions of cultural and material value, inspired by time spent at an historic gold mining town. There, the artist became aware that every inch of soil had been crushed and eroded in search of treasure, choices made to destroy one thing of beauty in exchange for chances of finding another. Choice Mate offers this same conundrum. Each of the ‘wax effigies’ of rocks may contain genuine gold. Visitors may ‘mine’ the work, take a piece home, destroying its original form. Or not. They may leave the landscape intact.

The work explores fleeting moments of connection. Visitors who ‘mine’ the work leave their details to participate further. They’re contacted for an image of the souvenired object in its new location.  A book is produced, forming a portrait of the small social network created with each installation, as it slowly disintegrates. This is added to a growing archive on a shelf originally consisting of only blank books. The social portrait feeding back into the artwork.  These books become  archive/ memorial to human interaction of the original artificial landscape. Ultimately all that’s left of the installation will be the archive.” – Bridget Kennedy