Tightness X Toughness
The second work in a series of three participatory installations that invited people to wheel a wheelchair down two, long. strangely lit corridors that narrowed imperceptibly.
Produced for Crossings the 2021 iteration of the Fremantle Biennali this was a large scale sculptural artwork. Two tunnels dissected a park on the foreshore of the Derbarl-Yerrigan in Walyalup. The tunnels were lit with hundreds of LED lights that played an animation on a nine minute loop.
The external proportions echoed the two Fremantle traffic bridges and the internal dimensions were taken from measurements of the artists body and the wheelchair he uses. The tunnels crossed at a point relative to the the deepest channel of the river. Audiences were invited to navigate the Tightness x Toughness corridors in a manual wheelchair. As they traversed the corridors the walls and ceilings narrowed, constricting movement and increasing the difficulty in proceeding forwards.
Crossings are areas of change and transition – they span barriers, creating suspended moments in time that can lead to chance encounters between travellers.Crossings are not just physical or observable phenomena; human beings are in a constant state of transition, reshaping our selves and our ideas as we respond to new stimulation.
Form-ply, structural pine, steel, LED battens, pharos controller and driver, cabling, wheelchairs.
60m x 40m x 2.8m
05-2 Nov 2021
Fremantle, Western Australia