Denise Higgins

Denise Higgins and Gary Smith, two visual artists, working on an arts installation called the barbed maze, to show at Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) Gallery. We have (as we launch the crowd-funding campaign) @ 12 weeks left to build the work, 4 days to install, 5 weeks to exhibit, before the party's over.

Our backgrounds are in 2D and 3D work, with a compulsion to collaborate on large scale installations works every couple of years, (you swear off, it then forget!). Lights, mirrors, journeys and encounters are thematic preoccupations of our arts practice. In the barbed maze we take our mirror fixation further... 

This installation is an immersion in reflection and an infinity of pathways. The gallery walls are mirror-skinned. A suspended maze—formed from barbed wire partitions and mirrored chambers— is a confounding and thorny puzzle. The maze form is a resonant symbol of journey, of turning inwards. However in this instance, the maze is not safe...The form has sentience, it watches, holds, erodes, and judges. 

Gallery-goers are in journey mode, both herded and displaced in their movements through the space. The chambered areas play with confinement, interrogation, surveillance, projections of other through the use of sound, video, holographic images, tableaux and objects.

Walking here requires awareness and focus hones to a sharp point. In traversing the maze dust motes coalesce into anatomies,  disassociated voice snippets bounce across air pockets,  a ruffle of space hints at being tracked. Which path will you take, who can you turn to, is there any chance of refuge?

CCAS space is @140 square metres, however it will be transformed into a maze-scape that is perceptually 4,000 square meters. Contact microphones and 'events' will create a live soundscape in the space—lights, cameras and PA systems will be used to disrupt the sense of 'this is a gallery?' Grounded in the poetic the work:
≈  offers a visceral experience of a carceral landscapes;
≈  explores our cultural projections of ‘other’; and
≈  amplifies the resonance of displacement.
Our installation is site specific, it is temporally bound to the duration of the show. It does not coalesce until it is installed. There are NO pictures of it is as yet because the bits don't come together until we spend the fours days in the gallery installing the work! However there is in progress information at http://www.denisehiggins.biz/bmaze-blog/

The funding target we have set is is to buy at least  70 of the 100 sheets of 3mm acrylic mirror (2440 x 1220mm) needed to completely re-skin the gallery walls. The mirror sheets in total will cost $11,711.  In general the material costs for this show are around $20,000. This includes a steel hanging grid to support the suspended maze, purpose built maze partitions, event chambers,  surveillance mirror and various hardware such as beam clamps (45) . This is a self funded project and in addition to the costs detailed above, the artists are developing objects, video, still works, sound and lightning components to shape and trigger events in the space.

In terms of the materially based elements of the installation, the key challenges are the tight timelines in terms of developing the installation components and the cost of materials.  The sooner we can organise sourcing and delivery of the materials the more time we have for design, development and troubleshooting. In terms of the interactive dimension of the work, there are a range of contingencies implicit in the layers we can pull back on,  should there be any unforeseen issues in terms of sound, image, and events.