Contested spaces
Author Identifier (ORCID)
Nicola Kaye’s ORCID record 
Lyndall Adams’s ORCID record Marcella Polain’s ORCID record
Non-Traditional Research Output
Original Creative Work
Document Type
Non-Traditional Research Output
Date of Publication
2021
Location of the Work
Perth
Research Statement
Research Background
Contested Spaces is an ongoing collaborative multimedia work—a projection scrolling over 19 canvases embroidered with profanities. The projection—typed text with handwritten corrections spliced together with film of alleyways and weedy public space. The work navigates the spaces we inhabit as we learn to live and cope with Covid-19. This landscape presented us with a world in lockdown with unprecedented social dislocation, homelessness, unemployment and mental health issues: a conundrum of epic proportions. In these transient, brutal and ephemeral spaces, this collaboration begins a conversation in response to the spaces we inhabit. The interplay between words and weeds is our reaction to unstable times.
Research Contribution
What does a pandemic look like? It is through the expletives, rewriting, and weeds, that we critically engage with picturing the complexity of our new normal. The scrolling images act as tricksters, lulling one into apathy, yet, jarring by its incessant creeping invasion, like opportunistic weeds (akin to the virus), demanding attention and questioning the confluence of diverse forms and practices. The coupling of profanity (stitched by hand), poetry & introduced species (weeds) that make up contested spaces sees supposedly disparate elements collide in response to the increasing normativity of Covid-19.
Research Significance
Contested spaces was positioned as part of a broader national focus in 2021, as part of an overarching project: Frame of Mind: Mental Health and the Arts between the National Art School, Sydney and ECU Galleries, supported by the Minderoo Foundation ($60,000). The project encompassed exhibitions in Sydney and Perth, workshops and Symposium: Making Sense of the World Through Art, which “explore[d] the mental health challenges faced by artists, and how artists engage with mental health themes within their work”. A catalogue, booklet and microsite were produced and the exhibition reviewed widely.
Publication Title
The Dark Side
Publisher
Edith Cowan University / Gallery 25
School
School of Arts and Humanities
RAS ID
36265
Event Title
Perth International Jazz Festival
Event Dates
May 27-June 17, 2021
Additional Information
Duration
Continuous loop/dimensions variable
Copyright
metadata only record
Comments
Contested Spaces multimedia and black embroidery cotton on cotton duck and Belgian Linen.
Kay, N., Terry, S., Adams, L., & Polain, M. (2021). Contested spaces. Dark side. Mount Lawley, Australia: Edith Cowan University / Gallery 25.
https://www.ecu.edu.au/schools/arts-and-humanities/ecu-galleries/past-exhibitions/exhibitions/2021/dark-side