Red Check; Eyeful; Split
The Tin Sheds Gallery, in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney has a long and illustrious history, largely due to its association with the political artwork and activism generated by the associated art workshops throughout the seventies. It has also been a very particular type of large scale, crude industrial gallery which has, in the past, most effectively lent itself to installations which acknowledge and work with the particularities of the space. This gallery has now closed, part of a restructuring of space on the university grounds, and has been replaced by a new gallery in the forecourt of the faculty's Wilkinson Building, a gallery that is the antithesis of the original in shape, scale, fittings and genesis.
The closing of the old and opening of the new galleries was heralded by the exhibition of a suite of artwork: Margaret Roberts' installation Red Check constituting the final exhibition in the old Tin Sheds Gallery, and the works of Sydney artist Deborah Vaughan and Western Australian artist Bevan Honey in the new gallery. Each of these exhibitions, aside from their internal intentions, seemed to suggest a particular take on the gallery relocation.
Margaret Roberts' work explored the material space of the old gallery: it encompassed everything the space is, used the concrete floor, the white-painted brick walls and the space in between through the use of two swings solidly attached to the beams using long, industrial-strength chains. Swinging allowed visitors to inhabit all the space between the floor and ceilings, and converted what was once a machinery workshop into a play space-a place for both regression and for moving on. Roberts rendered giant size rust-red tiles on the floor, and