National Anthem 2019
FROM THE COLLECTION:
NATIONAL ANTHEM & A NEW ORDER Buxton Contemporary University of Melbourne National Anthem, 2019 Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne 2019 "Borderlands" Enamel, Hi-impact Styrene, wood, metal 120 x 773cm © Janenne Eaton 2019 Wall Text Janenne Eaton’s BORDERLANDS evokes both physical borders and non-physical border zones. The phrase KEEP CLEAR is inscribed across the work’s dark mirror-like surface. These words reverberate with multiple possible interpretations, such as a refusal of entry or an appeal to maintain rational clarity. Reflected within the work’s surface, the viewer is contained and framed within a fence-like architecture of gridded structures – drawn in as an active participant in the work’s narrative. The viewer occupies multiple vantage points, having seemingly breached the barricade and appearing, ghostlike, on both sides of it simultaneously. We look at ourselves looking and the screen looks back at us, prompting the internal question, ‘Which side of the fence are you on?’ Artist Statement The work is made in the spirit of opposition, not only to our government’s willingness to establish an omnipresent surveillance regime in order to sort one group of people from another, but to those ordinary ‘barriers’, those multiple zones of exclusion embedded in our society that relate to issues of social equity, marginalisation, identity and ‘otherness’. Janenne Eaton 2019 |
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