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Elsewhere, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra, Australia 1997 Produced during the Scottish Arts Council funded twelve-month Australian Residency 1997/98, with support from Canberra School of Art, ANU. A re-worked version was shown at the Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow as part of the exhibition 'Continuum'.
Concept: Canberra was built around the idea 'Capital City'. Its projected population size has still to be reached. In the meantime the open vistas, car parks and recreational spaces are waiting patiently to be filled. For me these empty public spaces became very poignant - there was all the evidence of a sophisticated city infrastructure at work but it was as if the daily business was in fact taking place elsewhere - in a place other than the physical realm.
Project Description: Two video monitors; one, showed footage from cycling through empty streets of Canberra - it is edited so that no people appear in any of the footage. The other monitor showed footage from an arcade racing game, similarly, moving through an empty landscape. Both forms of footage were slowed down to about the same speed to further emphasise the visual qualities between the real and the virtual. Eight line drawings were drawn directly onto the gallery walls. The drawings were developed from photographs of actual people in relation to the city - those that appeared connected and disconnected from their social environment. For example; mobile-phone user, computer-operator, arcade shooter, sleeping rough, depressed, street-preacher.