The Illuminated Field

Background: The Illuminated Field draws from precedence in the field of video art and site specific installation practice. More broadly it is engaged with a notion of interiority that may be understood within the context of interior design as a site of relations. The work addresses the problems of polarisation, notions of hard borders and boundaries which are endemic both in terms of human subjectivity, architecture and political culture. It proposes instead a more nuanced notion of the threshold, functioning to disturb the apparent demarcation between the interior and exterior on multiple levels. Contribution: The illuminated Field consists of a synchronised video and sound installation developed from video footage filmed over two days at Europe’s first commercial Solar power station in Andalucía, Spain. The work is a video site essay, documenting sustainable solar power generation in all its sublime simplicity. The work also explores the notion of the cultural threshold, given the location of the solar field between the European and Islamic cultures which face each other in Southern Spain. Andalucía reveals many instances of this cultural interrelatedness. It is a hinge between the interior and the exterior of European cultural identity which is omnidirectional: both have influenced the other over the millennia. Both are part of the other. The location of the exhibition at the Islamic Museum of Australia was a provocation, drawing connections between physical light and nur- the Islamic notion of spiritual light. These thresholds of interrelatedness, environmental and cultural are an indirect commentary on current political polarisations both in Australia and internationally. Significance: The work was produced while on an Australia Council for the Arts residency and was commissioned by the then head curator of the Islamic Museum. It received positive feedback from members of that community as well as from senior figures in the Melbourne artworld.