Mapping the interior: In search of an inland sea

BACKGROUND: This project applied an archival artistic research methodology to investigate how reimagined narratives of colonial exploration might provide new ways for thinking through contemporary masculinity and vulnerability. In “An Archival Impulse”, Hal Foster identifies the archive’s emergence as a powerful trope within a strain of contemporary art practice that questions the relationship between past/present, memory/reality. Foster was influenced by Foucault’s "The Archaeology of Knowledge", which characterised the archive as a repository of what is recorded and what is silenced. Thomas Hirschhorn, Tacita Dean and Kara Walker create archival artworks as manifestations of particular temporalities and interventions into knowledge production. This project applied a queer gaze to an historical narrative, examining how different alliances of representation might challenge dominant constructions of colonial history. CONTRIBUTION: Mapping the Interior: In Search of an Inland Sea is a cinematically scaled three-channel video installation that depicts four young men carrying a whaleboat through a harsh desert landscape. The work recalls Charles Sturt’s 1844 final exploration into the Australian interior with two whaleboats as he searched for a mythical inland sea. The research found that the queer gaze was able to reveal the failures of masculinity and colonisation by undermining dominant representations of colonial masculinity. SIGNIFICANCE: The project was commissioned by the Victorian College of the Arts for their annual Solo Projects exhibition at Margaret Lawrence Gallery during the Melbourne International Art Festival. Mapping the Interior was also shown at the 2013 Palimpsest Biennale, Mildura, one of the largest biennales in regional Australia. The work was reviewed in Raven Contemporary, several national art blogs and The Age, where Dan Rule described it as “a tete-a-tete between blind colonialist ambition, loyalty, vulnerability and the sexualised queer gaze.”