Circuit
Ground
Sandra Selig is best known for a very particular kind of work. Her ‘cool’, linear thread installations, which often function more as forms of architectonic drawing than sculptural works, have become her signature style. It is this component of her practice that featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s ‘Primavera’ exhibition of 2004 with the work Synthetic Infinite and that is on permanent display in the Brisbane Magistrates Court building as part of the commissioned public art program there.
Selig’s practice however has had other elements for some time now, including an ongoing investigation into the chaotic, organic architecture of spider web. A collection of these ‘web samples’ was included in the ‘Prime’ at the Queensland Art Gallery last year. ‘Signature styles’ can sometimes be a spider’s web of their own, trapping an artist and disallowing them the chance to expand and develop their practice in new directions. Two recent shows of Selig’s work in Brisbane demonstrate her continuing determination to subtly shift her practice.
Firstly, Circuit at the Institute of Modern Art introduces a new sense of time-based experience to the work. On initial viewing this installation seems to consist of threads simply pulled into a hole in the interior wall of the street-facing gallery space. It becomes clear that the hole (and therefore the thread) leads through to an interior space, accessible through a baffled doorway.
Inside this gallery the work looks very much as one would expect from this artist: delicate, repetitive patterns of line and thread forming trajectories through space. However, a lighting system is timed to go on and off at regular intervals within this gallery. As the lights shut off, the threads making up