Double Vision, digital art screen in Double Bay
'Double Vision' is a digital public art project run by Woollahra Council. The digital screen, installed under the escalators to the Woollahra Library (Kiaora Place) in Double Bay features a range of varied video or other screen based artworks from different artists. Works displayed on the screen aims to engage and provide a point of difference to the public in this space.
EXPLORATION/ PRESERVATION
Ideas of exploration and the question of preservation echo through the works of the artists exhibited. The exploration of colonisation and its legacy in Australia, the significance of indigenous plants and invasive species and reflections on the fragility of memory, place and environment are at the forefront in these works.
Double Vision is currently screening works by Joan Ross, Phillip Muzzal and Cara-Ann Simpson.
Artist: Joan Ross
Title: I Give You a Mountain
Duration: 6.15 min
Courtesy of the artist Joan Ross and N.Smith Gallery
Bold and experimental, Joan Ross' practice investigates the legacy of colonialism in Australia with a particular focus on reconfiguring the colonial Australian landscape and drawing attention to the complex and ongoing issues surrounding the effects of globalisation and colonisation.
"I Give You a Mountain’" draws on Sarah Stone’s 18th century depiction of the Leverian Museum, with Ross reimagining it as a surreal, drowned ruin filled with headless birds, colonial relics, and absurd imagery including an advert for 'Dog Happiness' in a pill. At its core, one colonial man offers another a mountain, prompting everything to dissolve. This gesture raises a powerful question: how can we own a mountain? Ross confronts the absurdities of empire with irony, unsettling beauty and sharp critique.
Artist: Phillip Muzzal
Title: AND IF IT ALL FALLS APART, WHAT THEN?
Duration: 5.00 min
Courtesy of the artist Phillip Muzzal
Phillip Muzzal is a multidisciplinary artist and his practice in video art, machinima, and digital mixed media has recently focused on the fragility of landscapes and the tension between the physical world and its archival echoes.
'AND IF IT ALL FALLS APART, WHAT THEN?' looks at how fragile memory, place, and the environment really are. The work imagines a future after human life, where nature survives only as broken digital records. Its shifting, dreamlike images drawn from real landscapes form an archive that is already failing, haunted by what can’t be held onto. It speaks to a future where people try to save what is disappearing by capturing images and scans, as if recording could replace care. But preservation breaks down when there is nothing left to preserve. This piece asks us to reflect on beauty, loss, and what remains when everything else slips away.
Artist: Cara-Ann Simpson
Title: vita ex pulvere oritur (life arises from dust)
Duration: 15.00 min
Courtesy of the artist Cara-Ann Simpson and Onespace
Cara-Ann Simpson is an interdisciplinary artist, and her practice explores sensory perception, environmental interaction, plants, memory and deep listening. This trilogy features coastal banksia, African boxthorn and lemon myrtle. Recorded as indigenous to the Woollahra region at the time of colonisation, coastal banksia and lemon myrtle are widespread species along the eastern coastline. Positioned between these videos is the African boxthorn, an invasive species found in every Australian state and territory. Toxic to humans and animals, it thrives and survives as it slowly spreads. These works are joyous, revelling in the wonder of plants. But they also quietly ask whether we are ready to listen to the land; to heed the call to protect our enduring earth that provides life-giving sustenance. Will we let life rise from dust? These works are from Furari Flores (Stealing Flowers), celebrating plants and reflecting the artist’s journey living with disability.
For more information on the public art project, or you would like to be involved, please email cultural@woollahra.nsw.gov.au or call 9391 7102.