When Moving Through Ruins is a body of work consisting of a seven-channel video installation, single-channel video, and seven unique adaptable textiles. These adaptable and malleable structures can embody a new gestural form with every installation of the work. Made from black linen with hand appliquéd patterning, each textile is its own composite of conical shapes, flat lay folds, pleats and oversized pockets.
Seven women were asked to inhabit the interior spaces of these forms, to author them through slow self-directed movement. Agency was given over to each mover to explore the form from the inside, as a result each of the videos are unique in their rhythm and intonation, determined by the individual’s movement and gestural response to the textile. They shift between states of form and formlessness, between the figurative and the abstract. The body is rendered absent and in its place mercurial, metallic shapes appear floating in an inky black void. When Moving Through Ruins inscribes loss and longing, sadness and grief into cloth. The work is both an experimental study and a cartographic meditation into the emotional specter. It considers feelings of loss and longing as shifting states of embodied energies and intensities.
When Moving Through Ruins was supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. This creative work was conceived during field research and residency programs undertaken in Seville, Spain and Oaxaca, Mexico. Working in conjunction with the Creative Practices Lab, School of Arts and Media, UNSW, this project resulted in exhibition outcomes in Sydney (ALASKA Projects; UNSW Galleries), Melbourne (Anna Pappas Gallery; Spring 1883) and a solo exhibition When Moving through ruins at The Glasshouse, Port Macquarie Regional Gallery in 2016. The exhibition was accompanied by a publication with an exhibition essay by Talia Linz (Curator, Artspace).
