Category: Miniature Cities
Soft Science: City
Tracey Clement, ‘Soft Science City I,’ 2018, laboratory glass and knitted acrylic, dimensions variable, max height 50cm.
The first work in my Soft Science series, Soft Science: City, debuted in the group show Couplings in April 2018.
Curators Helen Hyatt-Johnston and Brad Buckley selected 30 artists (who are also couples) to exhibit together, including me and my partner Peter Burgess.
Read the Couplings e-catalogue here
Couplings
Dominik Mersch Gallery
11 April – 12 May 2018
Opening: Tuesday 10 April, 6–8pm
PhD show: Mapping The Drowned World
Tracey Clement, ‘Mapping The Drowned World’ installed at SCA, 21-23 September 2017.
All three bodies of work which I made for my PhD (Post-Premonitionism 2, Metropolis Experiment, and my Drowned World Maps) came together in my show Mapping The Drowned World, for 3 days only. Both the sculptures and the maps were made in response to JG Ballard’s 1962 novel, The Drowned World. You can watch me de-install the show in the video below.
Watch Tracey Clement de-install ‘Mapping The Drowned World.’ 3.5 years work, 6 day install, 7 hour de-install: compressed into 1.5 minutes!
Tracey Clement, ‘Mapping The Drowned World’ installed at SCA, 21-23 September 2017.
Tracey Clement, ‘Mapping The Drowned World’ installed at SCA, 21-23 September 2017.
Metropolis Experiment
Tracey Clement, ‘Metropolis Experiment,’ 2016-17, rusty steel, salt, laboratory glass, cotton, dimensions variable (max height 200cm). Photo T. Clement.
Metropolis Experiment, 2-17 June 2017 at AirSpace Projects, Marrickville.
Metropolis Experiment is part architectural model, part mad science: the whole city is a laboratory. But instead of shiny stainless and gleaming glassware in sterile white surrounds, we are presented with rusty tripods and salt crystals that creep up and over everything, corroding as they go. In Metropolis Experiment something has gone horribly wrong: it’s a ruined model city, a metaphor.
Metropolis Experiment is my third recent body of work which responds to the vivid prognostications of JG Ballard’s 1962 post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, The Drowned World. View the first here and the second here.
What links these works is the image of the ruined city, an image Ballard conjured so evocatively in The Drowned World.
Tracey Clement, ‘Metropolis Experiment,’ 2016-17, rusty steel, salt, laboratory glass, cotton, dimensions variable (max height 200cm). Photo T. Clement.
Thanks to its scale, Metropolis Experiment draws on the conceptual qualities of architectural models (as well as ruins) in order to make a point. As theorists are fond of pointing out, all ruins simultaneously embody both the present and the past.
Meanwhile, architectural models are inherently aspirational. They embody potential, physically manifested, but not quite realised. They represent the future. As a ruined model city (a combination of both) my artwork adds a third temporal stream: the future already devastated.
Metropolis Experiment is a premonition, a warning.
Metropolis Experiment II
Tracey Clement, ‘Metropolis Experiment II,’ 2016, laboratory glass, salt, rust, dimensions variable (max height 100cm).
Metropolis Experiment II is actually part of a larger work, Metropolis Experiment, which will be shown at AirSpace Projects 2-17 June 2017.
This sculpture is the unholy love child of an architectural model and a chemistry trial gone horribly wrong: it’s a ruined model city, a metaphor.
Metropolis Experiment is part of my third recent body of work in my Mapping The Drowned World project which responds to the vivid prognostications of JG Ballard’s 1962 post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, The Drowned World.
It is also my third model city. The previous two are: Post-Premonitionism 2 and Plastic City.
Post-Premonitionism 2
Tracey Clement, Post-Premonitionism 2, 2014-15, salt, rusty steel, cotton, dimensions variable, max height 1.8m.
Post-Premonistionism 2 is a sequel. It is my second sculptural response to JG Ballard’s novel The Drowned World. This work was installed during the group exhibition I coordinated, Mapping The Drowned World.
READ the ‘Mapping The Drowned World’ catalogue on ISSUU.
Thanks to its scale, Post-Premonitionism 2 draws on the conceptual qualities of architectural models, as well as ruins, in order to make a point. Architectural models are inherently aspirational. They embody potential, physically manifested, but not quite realised. They represent the future, while ruins ellicit a temporal slippage between the past and the present. But as a model city, my artwork adds a third temporal stream: the future already devastated.
Model cities are conventionally displayed so that the viewer takes a ‘god’s eye view’ like a triumphant ruler surveying his domain. In my work, the ruined city is positioned at eye height, precariously balanced on salty peaks of vaguely anthropomorphic volume, emphasising our complicity in creating this ruined future. Like Ballard’s novel, my ruined city is a warning.
Plastic City Videos
Plastic City was constructed in the gallery over 7 days.
Watch the whole project from beginning to end in these time-lapse videos.
Plastic City
Tracey Clement, concept drawing for ‘Plastic City’, 2010.
Big isn’t always better
Plastic City represents the annual consumption of one individual. The miniature buildings are made from every plastic container I bought during 2010; they were stored instead of recycled.
Tracey Clement, ‘Plastic City’ (detail), 2012, plastic containers used in 12 months, dimensions variable.
The vaguely sci-fi style of the mini city’s ‘architecture’ is an invitation to think about the future. Plastic City embodies a number of timely questions about the types of cities we want to live in, sustainable practice in urban environments and personal responsibility.
Visitors should leave asking themselves, “How big would my Plastic City be?” In this case, bigger isn’t better.
Plastic City highlights the fact that recycling is not enough. We need to choose items that aren’t heavily packaged. We need to use less and re-use, not just recycle.
Tracey Clement
2012
Plastic City was constructed on site over a week at Articulate Project Space, June 19-24, 2012.
The public were invited to visit during the making process and helped to ‘recycle’ the work at the closing event.
Post Premonitionism: JG Ballard’s The Drowned World
Post Premonitionism: What do you do when you have already seen the future? In 1962, JG Ballard’s book, The Drowned World, was a prescient warning; wilfully ignored.
Forty five years later, the causes may be different, but we seem to be spiralling into an ecological melt-down straight out of Ballard’s vision. What do you do when you have already seen the future? Apparently nothing.
In Post Premonitionism, fragile steel structures seem to mimic the skeletal remains of an abandoned city. Twisted, rusty and ephemeral, they eventually will disintegrate completely, vulnerable and helpless against nature’s inexorable power.
I have transposed Ballard’s premonition of The Drowned World on to the reality of Australia; salt takes the place of water in a continent characterised by drought.
Tracey Clement
2007
Post Premonitionism was a site-specific installation at Groundfloor Gallery, Balmain in 2007. It was my second solo exhibition with the gallery.
Photos: Details 1, 2, 4 & 5, Richard Glover. Details 3, 6 & 7 & installation shots, Tracey Clement.
Tracey Clement: artist and writer 