Second Nature, Third Space
8 March 2024 - 14 March 2024
Wreckers Artspace
When history isn’t recorded, it is kept in the earth.
Second Nature, Third Space is Dean Ansell’s first solo exhibition, an exploration into his ancestral bloodline, the Riḡorabana and the Balawaia, whose land reside in the Rigo area of Papua Niugini. He materialises his experience with geographic displacement by imprinting impressions of his familiar landscape and intertwining them with sound recordings sent from his motherland. Copper that bears scars of the environment, of creek boulder fissures located at his home alongside sounds recorded from Balawaian ancestral lands serve as a touch point to navigate his Melanesian diasporic position.
Through experimentation with earth materials such as water, copper, and wood, alongside the channelling of ancient Balawaian legend, lamentation, and ritual, this body of work poses the question of whether the gallery space can serve as a conduit for new land-scapes and cultural ‘third spaces’. Utilising contact microphones, audiences are invited to awaken the space, causing sounds to reverberate through its interior and resonate within materials from the natural environment.
Exhibition catalogue ︎︎︎
