‘Altar’ an installation of environmental art an experience of light & desert made permanent in a motel room
‘Altar’ is a place designed to experience the ephemeral light of the desert, a space to make communion with the light, the desert and the endless horizons of the outback.
‘Too often’ says Kane ‘we take for granted the majesty that nature provides us, from sunsets, to passing clouds, to the harsh heavy earth of the desert; we rarely sit in stillness in the embrace of the desert and revel in it’s beauty’.
This installation is an opportunity to do just so; to sit still and embrace the silence; experience the changing light and the endless horizon. It forms an opening to contemplate the immensity of the outback landscape.
What is ‘Environmental art?
Environmental art often takes its form as an installation a way to reframe the context and make it more permanent. According to Tate UK ‘Environmental art is an art-form that addresses social and political issues relating to the natural and urban environment’.
Quoting Kane, “The outback and desert has a real nomadism to it, a place you want to pass through rather than realise you are in it. The point with this installation is to make people stop and think and not take things for granted”. So often we forget to appreciate what surrounds us.
Why host an installation of ‘Environmental art’ in a motel?
You might be asking what has motivated us to host an installation of light and environmental art? What lies behind such an initiative?
Travelling to remote destinations such as Broken Hill is a form of pilgrimage and as part the journey, travellers come to stay and make lodging at a place like the Lodge Outback motel.
Hosting such an installation is a way of making the experience more permanent; it reframes the experience of travelling through flat planes of dirt and encourages the viewer to stop and think about what they have just experienced.
It is also an attempt to work with concepts that goes beyond traditional understandings of places. A motel, traditionally seen as a place to rest and stay for the night, is also a place where connections are formed between people and land, between cultural understandings past and present.
Come and see the installation it is running till mid September.
