jonathan dady
The language, the depiction, of form-what divides the virtualfrom the real, the representation from the actuality? What separates the two-dimensional from the threedimensional? Construction Drawings is a drawing in real space. It comprises steel scaffolding that mimics the shape of the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA), a gracious, early 20th century, inner suburban bluestone villa converted to a gallery and associated offices. Painted in the colours of a computer-based CAD drawing of the CACSA building, it replicates the building 's eastern and northern aspects, forming an L-shape that surrounds the north-eastern corner. lt mimics the chimneys, the door and window architraves, the curve of the corrugated iron verandah, even the verandah's lattice work. The scaffold is thus a physical manifestation of an architect's representation of a real building, an analogue of the CACSA, the real as virtual.
CAD drawings and building scaffolding possess a 'propositional' status in the development and realisation of architecture. Where a CAD drawing relies on illusory, perspectival space at a reduced scale, the scaffolding describes the building in actual scale. A CAD drawing can ignore gravity and simply depict forms. Here, the scaffold 'drawing' must include clamps, bolts and struts to prevent it falling down. lt thus includes subsidiary languages-the fastenings necessary to support the objects in space, and the coded colours of CAD illustration.
The scaffold intersects the plants growing in the gardengaps are left in the ironwork for tree trunks and other immovables; the metal is pushed through shrubs. The outside becomes the inside of this 'new' building, which reinvades the ground around it. lt situates us, the viewers, in relation to it.
Dady thus shifts our attention between different forms, languages