The instrumental, 2023, cardboard, trace paper, 60 x 30 x 30cm
Commissioned by the Cross Yarra Partnership for the Metro Tunnel Creative Program

Inspired by the tunnel boring machine deployed to create the Metro Tunnel system, The Instrumental is a manifestation of a fictional contraption, with each component deliberately elevated to form an imagined narrative.

Severed from its umbilical to the infrastructure above, the contraption has thus become an autonomous assembly of complex systems and a determination of combined elements that form strength through connections and the disbursement of load.

The Instrumental serves to act as an artefact of the embedded labour, imagination and innovation that becomes gradually forgotten over time after its primary outcome has been acheived.

On view as part of the group exhibition:
Making the Metro Tunnel: reflections by contemporary Australian artists
Presented by the Metro Tunnel Creative Program
Domain House, Dallas Brooks Drive, South Yarra, AUSTRALIA
1 April – 7 May, 2023