Talking to Strangers

Talking to Strangers was an installation of reclaimed graffiti accompanied by a cairn of spray-painted granite rocks, created in collaboration with Katie Hayne. It was intended to reflect on the material gestures that people leave in and shape the landscape (rural and urban). It is a kind of language or form of address that on the one hand can be recognised and partially understood but which on the other hand is never fully open or recoverable as a coherent conversation because the writer and reader never actually meet. Fragments, glimpses, shapes, floating words – material poetics.

The work was created for Material Poetics at ANCA Gallery (Canberra, ACT) which brought together poets and artists and artist poets to explore materiality. Some of the works incorporated the written word others focused on more obscure texts that may be found or made through assemblages of colour, form and line. Our contribution to the show also included a second iteration and new formulation of Love on the Rocks (first exhibited in Hopeless Romantics).

Images from above: Talking to Strangers (detail), 2016 UK Frederick & Katie Hayne
Talking to Strangers (detail), 2016 UK Frederick & Katie Hayne
Talking to Strangers (installation), 2016 UK Frederick & Katie Hayne