PROJECT: Sydney Contemporary Art Fair Installation
ARTIST: Hannah Quinlivan
ARTWORK TITLE: Uncertain Terrains
LOCATION: Sydney
DATE: 2019
Uncertain Terrains was a site-specific installation and spatial drawing by artist Hannah Quinlivan for Sydney Contemporary 2019. Combining elements of aluminium wire, salt and shadow, this spatial drawing investigated the structure of feeling of a time both enamoured with and discomforted by motion, and its characteristic rhythm of impulses, restraints and tones.
Uncertain Terrains interrogates the question of motion that seems to occupy our time. While some move freely – perhaps too freely – motion is haunted by its shadow, the forced immobility of those who are unable to move but cannot remain. Uncertain Terrains examines movement across borders, and the way in which, for many, borders may be crossed but never left behind. It seeks to unsettle unequal nature of borders, and the way in which they constitute our thoughts and emotions, even after they are traversed.
The installation involved the suspention of a mass of aluminium lines above a large plinth prior to the opening of the art fair. Over the four days of the art fair proper, Quinlivan produced a salt drawing beneath these suspended elements, capturing the shadows and refracted light of the works above. Her methodical production of the salt drawing echoing the slow rhythms of the border and its arbitrary yet concrete nature.
ARTIST BIO:
Quinlivan was invited to exhibit at MINIARTEXTIL, the 29th edition of the annual international survey show of Contemporary Textile Art, Como, Italy in October 2019, and exhibited her installation Uncertain Terrain at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra (2019) and at Sydney Contemporary (2019). She held her first New York solo with Jan Kossen Gallery in 2018, was featured at Hong Kong Art Central in 2017, Colorado State University (2017) and Canberra Museum and Art Gallery (2017). She was awarded the major public art commission for the new Canberra Light Rail Network (2018) and in 2016 constructed a spatial drawing / performance work Arrhythmia for the National Portrait Gallery, ACT. Also in 2016 she won an ANU Scholarship to attend a conference, Time and Temporality, at Cambridge University, where she concurrently exhibited an ephemeral, site-specific work Spatialisation at Pembroke College. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including the Queensland College of Art’s Drawn to Experience, a survey of Australian and International contemporary drawing practices (2015), Bega Valley Regional Gallery’s MOTION: The body & movement in Contemporary Art Practice (2015) and at Art Vault Mildura for their Australian Print Triennial (2015). She also participated in Project Field Trip, a touring exhibition travelling through Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia (2016).
Quinlivan is represented in number of collections including the National Gallery of Australia, The Australian High Commission (Singapore), ACT Legislative Assembly Art Collection (Canberra), the Arthur & Suzie Roe Collection, Deakin University Art Collection, The Australian National University, KPMG Art Collection, Shire of East Pilbara West Australia, Philip Cox Collection, Ormond College Collection, and various private collections. She graduated from ANU School of Art (Honours) in 2013 with first class honours. She has exhibited in Britain, Berlin, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and the United States.
