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What about 'Sunspotting'? Inland from Noosa, there is a road called Murdering Creek Road. A local builder who lives off Murdering Creek Road told me, very matter-of-factly, that it was the site of the massacre of local indigenous people. Given this local history and the current concern with processes of reconciliation, it is not surprising that Chris Bell, artist-in-residence at the Noosa Regional Gallery, should propose his installation, About 'Sunspotting' as a 'Sorry' work. The question for me was whether About 'Sunspotting' could perform the burden that Bell asked of it. How much can you ask of a work of art?
I should say at the outset that initially I had no idea that the installation About 'Sunspotting' was concerned with issues of reconciliation . I entered into the work without noticing the wall text and proceeded to engage with it in fairly formal terms. On the floor in front of me was a conglomeration of small irregular 'house-like' structures, covered with translucent white tissue paper. To my left stood a structure of crudely fashioned vertical wooden poles topped by mirror shards. On the other side of the gallery, the windows had been partially covered by white tissue paper to allow 'spots' of light to stream in. Outside the gallery, strategically placed mirrors reflected light onto the mirror shards which, in turn, reflected this light in the gallery space. As the sun moved across the sky, the 'sunspots' traversed the space 'casting fleeting spots of sun onto and around the white houses'.1 I felt I needed to spend a full sunny day in the space to experience the progress of the sun across the