Lauren Brincat
Salt lines: Play it as it Sounds, 2016
Dimensions Variable: Five meters tall and can stretch to a length of 42 metres
Sail cloth, church bell ropes, bass, performed maintenance action
Images by: Shauna Greyerbiehl
Special thank you to: Leah Gilbin, Kuba Dorabialski, Julia Champtaloup and Andrew Rothery
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and Australia Council for the Arts
Salt Lines collaborators: Dean Cross, Sally Chessell, Caterina Scardino, Bree van Reyk, Nick Wales, Leah Giblin, Tina Havelock Stevens, Mary Libro, Leah Fraser, Axel Osborne, Kevina Jo Smith, Holly McDonald, Hayley West and Kate Scardifield
For the 20th Biennale of Sydney Brincat has embarked upon an ambitious new body of work Performance Instruments, that begins with Salt Lines, a site specific installation for Carriageworks. Constructed primarily from white sail cloth and incorporating custom-made Church bell ropes and finely crafted red woollen hand grips known as ‘sallys’, Salt Lines is a meditation on the geographic borders that exist across the World Ocean - the immense and interconnected body of water that covers some 70% of the Earth’s surface. Brincat has long been interested in points of intersection and delineation, and the human experience that results from such divisions.
Each day over the course of the exhibition a person selected by Brincat is invited to reconfigure Salt Lines, adjusting the ropes and pulleys and rearranging the installation. While not considered a performance, this ‘maintenance’ will occur during public hours and will result in the work appearing differently each day, swelling and creasing at the whim of the aide. Over the duration of the exhibition the fabric will become more malleable, shapeshifting and never appearing in the same state twice.