Daydreams and Nightmares (in progress)
Coming to Ground
Thank you Bette, for your vision, ‘stickability’ and for the depth and breadth of your connections with the land and its diverse life: Art to Indigenous and Migrant peoples understandings of landscape.
So many rich (and unknown) relationships. I look forward to engaging with the finished work.
- Professor Stuart B. Hill, Foundation Chair of Social Ecology.
Coming to Ground 2011, (a garden design). Eco-humanist mandala garden designed for multi-ethnic Western Sydney. (Graphics: Dr Hilary Rhodes.)
Coming to Ground 2011, Virtual view from inside the garden. (Graphics: Dr Hilary Rhodes.)
Threshold
Threshold (designed 2011, four suspended transparencies (each measuring 300 x 400 cm) forming a 'room'. Inside is a replica of an ancient wooden boat.
Landmarks Watermarks
Landmarks Watermarks (1996), site-specific, two mode, multi-media installation for the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney.
Mode 1: Projector on, projecting a single 675cm x 360cm. (ie. full wall size) of a dark watery cave entrance showing sea view through cave arc. Projection on back wall of gallery directly opposite entrance.
Sound track of lapping waves is running, all other lights off. This mode lasts for 1 minute, 20 seconds.
Mode 2: Sound and projected image fade to off over 10 seconds, while gallery lights slowly come on using 20 second dimmer. Static pictures and other objects now fully visible as in a conventional exhibition. All equipment is synchronised using Dataton multimedia software operating the whole installation from a Mac LC computer.
Mode 1: Projector on, projecting a single 675cm x 360cm. (ie. full wall size) of a dark watery cave entrance showing sea view through cave arc. Projection on back wall of gallery directly opposite entrance.
Sound track of lapping waves is running, all other lights off. This mode lasts for 1 minute, 20 seconds.
Mode 2: Sound and projected image fade to off over 10 seconds, while gallery lights slowly come on using 20 second dimmer. Static pictures and other objects now fully visible as in a conventional exhibition. All equipment is synchronised using Dataton multimedia software operating the whole installation from a Mac LC computer.
Landmarks Watermarks, installation components:
1. The viewer enters through the divide in the centre of the photographic vinyl mural measuring 440 x 330cm, hung just inside the entrance gallery entrance. The mural shows the view of Oxford Street Paddington just outside the gallery.
2. A rectangular convex mirror (40 x 60cm) sits on a clear Perspex stand immediately opposite the entrance, so that the first thing people see upon entering the exhibition is their own reflected portrait set against the backdrop of Oxford Street. During Mode One, the viewer's portrait is framed by the cave projection on the back wall of the gallery.
3. A 30 x 30cm colour photograph of a tiny island surrounded by sea is mounted onto white Perspex measuring fixed at the back of the mirror.
4. Two colour, and one black and white montage photographs, plus one colour photograph each framed in wood and measuring 127 x 109cm rest upon wooden shelves 20cm deep, 300cm long and about 150cm above the floor, supported by decorative metal brackets: Symbolon, is a double portrait montage of my mother in Malta and Australia (1954 and 1952 respectively). Next to Symbolon is a self-portrait (1993) photograph by the Mediterranean Sea in Malta, with a tiny island in the distant background.
The third, an untitled digital montage photograph on the wall opposite, is an image I reconstructed just as seen in a dream. It shows a giant Maltese dome rising above the horizon of my father's old (dismantled) market garden in what is now a suburban area of Baulkham Hills in Western Sydney. This sits next to a fourth photographic montage showing the same market garden, with my father's Maltese village on the horizon, above which floats my young father's ghosted portrait. The village and church dome partially hide his face. These two photographs are framed and installed in the same manner as Symbolon and my self-portrait.
4. A clear Perspex water tank with a white base measuring 120 x 120cm x 15cm depth, contains 10 x A3 floating photographic transparencies of my migrant parents. (Like shards of china and pottery from all over the world that wash on the shores of Mrs Macquarie's Chair in Sydney Harbour.) The water is reflected on to the gallery ceiling, while the transparencies project their images onto the tank floor.
The tank is placed at the foot of the stand on the side showing the island print.
5. A shelf (300 x 30cm) fixed above the gallery entrance hidden behind the mural, supports all of the electronic equipment required to operate the installation, including the slide projector the lens of which protrudes through the mural.
1. The viewer enters through the divide in the centre of the photographic vinyl mural measuring 440 x 330cm, hung just inside the entrance gallery entrance. The mural shows the view of Oxford Street Paddington just outside the gallery.
2. A rectangular convex mirror (40 x 60cm) sits on a clear Perspex stand immediately opposite the entrance, so that the first thing people see upon entering the exhibition is their own reflected portrait set against the backdrop of Oxford Street. During Mode One, the viewer's portrait is framed by the cave projection on the back wall of the gallery.
3. A 30 x 30cm colour photograph of a tiny island surrounded by sea is mounted onto white Perspex measuring fixed at the back of the mirror.
4. Two colour, and one black and white montage photographs, plus one colour photograph each framed in wood and measuring 127 x 109cm rest upon wooden shelves 20cm deep, 300cm long and about 150cm above the floor, supported by decorative metal brackets: Symbolon, is a double portrait montage of my mother in Malta and Australia (1954 and 1952 respectively). Next to Symbolon is a self-portrait (1993) photograph by the Mediterranean Sea in Malta, with a tiny island in the distant background.
The third, an untitled digital montage photograph on the wall opposite, is an image I reconstructed just as seen in a dream. It shows a giant Maltese dome rising above the horizon of my father's old (dismantled) market garden in what is now a suburban area of Baulkham Hills in Western Sydney. This sits next to a fourth photographic montage showing the same market garden, with my father's Maltese village on the horizon, above which floats my young father's ghosted portrait. The village and church dome partially hide his face. These two photographs are framed and installed in the same manner as Symbolon and my self-portrait.
4. A clear Perspex water tank with a white base measuring 120 x 120cm x 15cm depth, contains 10 x A3 floating photographic transparencies of my migrant parents. (Like shards of china and pottery from all over the world that wash on the shores of Mrs Macquarie's Chair in Sydney Harbour.) The water is reflected on to the gallery ceiling, while the transparencies project their images onto the tank floor.
The tank is placed at the foot of the stand on the side showing the island print.
5. A shelf (300 x 30cm) fixed above the gallery entrance hidden behind the mural, supports all of the electronic equipment required to operate the installation, including the slide projector the lens of which protrudes through the mural.
Vault Suite
Vault Suite (1991), site specific installation for Australian Perspecta 1991, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Its four components are:
1. Crypt, 173 x 127 cm (suspended in window) comprising 3 Cibachrome transparencies mounted on clear perspex, of (i) x-ray of a painting and frame by Jacopo di Cione (16th C Italian painter); (ii) x-ray of a female human chest; (iii) small circular micro-graphic cross-section of a painting surface also from the 16th C.
2. Vault, 184 x 101 x 50 cm, Wooden (Poplar) construction. One face there is a black and white photograph scanned directly onto the timber, showing the hand-chiselled wooden back support for Jacopo di Cione's central altar panel seen x-rayed in Crypt (i). On its reverse face is my hand-chiselled copy of the original conservator's photograph of the hand-carved back of di Cione's panel.
3. Untitled, 160 x 60cm, old recycled timber planks resting against the wall (not shown here).
4. Untitled, consists of two black and white photographic transparencies showing a positive (102 x 58 cms), and a negative (155 x 86 cm) view respectively, of the scanned image in Vault. NOT FOR SALE
1. Crypt, 173 x 127 cm (suspended in window) comprising 3 Cibachrome transparencies mounted on clear perspex, of (i) x-ray of a painting and frame by Jacopo di Cione (16th C Italian painter); (ii) x-ray of a female human chest; (iii) small circular micro-graphic cross-section of a painting surface also from the 16th C.
2. Vault, 184 x 101 x 50 cm, Wooden (Poplar) construction. One face there is a black and white photograph scanned directly onto the timber, showing the hand-chiselled wooden back support for Jacopo di Cione's central altar panel seen x-rayed in Crypt (i). On its reverse face is my hand-chiselled copy of the original conservator's photograph of the hand-carved back of di Cione's panel.
3. Untitled, 160 x 60cm, old recycled timber planks resting against the wall (not shown here).
4. Untitled, consists of two black and white photographic transparencies showing a positive (102 x 58 cms), and a negative (155 x 86 cm) view respectively, of the scanned image in Vault. NOT FOR SALE
The ubiquity of photography and its indeterminate identity, versus its determinate identity in relation to painting, is one of the themes addressed by Bette Mifsud’s work about photography. Three of her installations: “Hallucinations and Other Facts”, “Mute” and her most recent work for the 1991 Perspecta, [“Vault Suite”], directly address this particular problematic. Her work combines these polarized positions by acknowledging photography has an identity in relation to painting…. Dr Susan Best, Continuum, Vol 6/2.s
Mute
Mute (1990) shown as a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney in 1991. Comprising: four suspended large format archival photographic transparency films, each measuring 230 x 110 cm; plus a framed transparency mounted on mirror and framed in wood, measuring 80 x 44 cm. This installation is a unique work produced by Fuji Film I&I, Tokyo, Japan. $AUD10,000.