pat hoffie and stefan purcell
Pat Hoffie is interested in transformations. Like a magician, she invites her audiences to suspend prior beliefs as they engage with experiences that fold history into contemporary situations. This is evident in the revelatory installation she and Stefan Purcell (of Urban Art Projects) achieved for State Library of Queensland (SLQ) visitors in WindWells: Channeling + Divining. It had a robust energy that is rarely seen in exhibitions held at such venues and says a lot about how, since its dramatic revamp in 2006, the State Library of Queensland has expanded existing ideas of what is appropriate and possible for visual events.
Ironically, galleries tend to separate art from their viewers; even in the most enlightened contemporary venues security measures are enforced. However this was not overtly evident with WindWells, as some risk on the part of the artists and the institution was accepted as necessary for audience involvement in this project. Art as knowledge transfer, or as a portal into knowledge, has come to be a driving mandate of the contemporary library, and today it realises that the attention of the viewer has often to be grabbed with mischief, if not more confrontational ploys. Hence the darkened gallery space, projected film footage wrapped round two walls, a hologram vignette with a ghostly figure beckoning, water tanks cloaked with rows of de-accessioned books (their contents hidden), an old windmill linked to a serpentine pipe system sprouting gramophone speakers and painted International Klein Blue, and glass cylinders containing what looked like miniaturised electric lightening, all acted as mind-teasers for the WindWells narrative.
It is narrative in which not only the channeling of water by windmills (or rather ‘windpumps’) from the late 19th