The Element Orange

The Element Orange was an installation of three structures made with annealed wire and metal. At the entrance to the gallery, a wire, muslin and fibreglass structure was attached to the skylight overhead. It sat at head height, with hundreds of wires springing from the frame.

Two of the  gallery walls were painted in vivid saturated colours, one orange and one blue. On the orange wall was a round welded metal sculpture with a red-hot heating coil at its centre. On adjacent white wall was a semicircular metal sculpture with another coiled heating element, also red-hot. With the heating coils in operation, the gallery was unpleasantly hot.

The work explored trauma, memory and the natural world. It was made as part of my post-graduate studies in sculpture at Sydney College of the Arts.

The Element Orange was exhibited at Performance Space, Sydney in a group exhibition titled Drop, with Juliet Fowler-Smith and Ted Riggs in 1990.