AUSTRALIAN SKYLINE / LANDSCAPE

photomontage of proposal

2015, SUBMISSION FOR TAPESTRY DESIGN PRIZE FOR ARCHITECTS

Proposed for the 2015 Australian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, this piece of tapestry is a figurative collage of major Australian skylines and landscape. Like New York City’s diorama at the 1939 – 1940 World’s Fair, a large wall tapestry envelops a grandroom, extending observer’s perception to that of the image. Unlike a picture window, the image do not have to simulate a reality that we know, but rather offers a visual interpretation.

Similar to an actual woven tapestry, the collage is a carefully joining of patchworks that defines a whole. As a nation cannot be adequately defined by the skyline of a city, this piece collages skylines of the major Australian cities; namely Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Gold Coast as well as Hobart, Darwin and Cairns. The word ‘skyline’ is a rather oxymoron when compared to the predominantly flat landscape of Australia. The image here then reflects the central flat plains of Australia, with the foreground dominated by major Australian coastal cities. Canberra, the Australian capital, designed by Walter Burley Griffin and planned between the two largest cities of Sydney and Melbourne is an etching into the inland Australian landscape. While a typical image of a city’s skyline focuses on a tall well-known skyscraper, this collage fixates itself into the natural rock formation of Uluru / Ayer’s Rock – an affirmation that natural landscape defines Australia as much as the skyline of cities.