Survey
Traveling the Western Australian countryside, thin flashes of vibrant colour interrupt the earthy tones of the landscape. Tied to vegetation; perhaps to mark a rare plant or maybe to signal that particular plants imminent demise, is lurid surveyors tape, a marker of impending change.
In state forests it marks blocks of trees for logging or diseased plants for removal. Along the roads a marker surveying where road works are to begin or used as a signal for others to follow this bush track to a survey site. In the mineral rich outback and on farms, to mark out prospective mining survey sites or communications towers. In suburbia, denoting new building sites, new roads or playgrounds to be built. All places of forthcoming change.
Using a technique that recalls earlier hand made art methods and an industrial material that signifies future alteration, a line of inquiry is opened on development. The impact and the management of development, across a duration of time affects us all.
The works themselves are garish statement on the environment working with architectural form and the physical characteristics of the site to become signifiers of change by their own presence. An imposition on the landscape that will require a negotiation.
Tania Spencer
2013
