Artist’s Statement
‘Under the hammer, blessed with character, a driveway absolved of tree fall, another pearly-eyed crow, a year’s worth of indecision on the compost heap…’ The text includes samples from the property section of the local Adelaide newspaper, which I then matched with images of houses and their surroundings in my immediate neighbourhood. Yet none of these places is quite as it seems. What is going on behind closed doors, the venetian blinds, the corrugated iron? Why is there fencing wire on a lamp-post? A sprig of wattle in the middle of the road? A skeleton on the nature strip? Perhaps a clue in misheard conversations, broken trust, unreliable memory… and all around, the signs of leakage…
Ian Gibbins is a widely-published poet, video artist and electronic musician with four collections of poetry: Urban Biology (2012); The Microscope Project: How Things Work (2014); Floribunda (2015) and A Skeleton of Desire (2019). Ian’s videos have been shown regularly at international festivals, having won or been short-listed for multiple awards. His audio and video work has been commissioned for public art programs, and has featured in several gallery shows and installations. In his former life, Ian was an internationally recognised neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University, South Australia. For details of Ian’s creative work, visit his website.