Flags and Tags- Marking Time
-> 2011Public art installation with Siying Zhou, Seabreeze Festival, Nightcliff foreshore, Northern Territory.
TAGS AND FLAGS - MARKING TIME
Artist Siying Zhou and Sarah Pirrie responded to Seabreeze Festival with artworks that celebrate the changing face of our beloved Nightcliff foreshore. Focusing on small and often unnoticed events, Tags and Flags- Marking Time offers a snapshot of activities and dates which make up our personal experience of this communal space. Tags and Flags –Marking Time create a walking trail of discovery using small and exquisitely crafted tags and strings of colourful triangular flags. Both artforms act as markers on our landscape citing moments of change and a convergence of human tactics and Nature's actions.
TAGS
Siying's tags mark time both in the artist's labour and in the date that has been stitched onto the tags. Needlework is a labour of love and in this context this labour has been transferred to the small moments. Many of the dates suggest a time pre-Nightcliff Foreshore marking an unknown occasion or a bigger sense of place, histories of use and pre and post colonial past.
FLAGS
Much of the colourful bunting we see today provides a cautionary message, warning of potholes in the roads, unsafe fences or hazards of a more ambiguous nature. Nightcliff foreshore, recently hit by Cyclone Carlos, has been witness to many forms of decorative alerts. Bunting has decorated fallen trees and provided a quick solution to an escalating clean-up process. This project reclaims the bunting to provide Seabreeze Festival with a decoration that alerts and celebrates the changing face of our Nightcliff Foreshore. Since February, Nightcliff foreshore and Rapid Creek have provided a place of documentation recording the impact of Cyclone Carlos. Although many of the fallen trees have gone, this project captures the memory of this time. Marking the occasion of Seabreeze Festival, this project is an acknowledgement of our environment as fragile and changeable.
