Various interventions and gestures contribute to a ‘narrative of place’ where authorship expands and narrative is disrupted. Intervening in the physicality of ‘M Shed’, Steven Rhall's Gesture (70º East) New Day Rising responds to the site of the Queen Victoria Market by co-opting the grid, a device used in the demarcation of (cemetery) space and colonial tool employed in the ‘making’ of Melbourne. Orientating the east–west grid of the Queen Victoria Market itself (a mark of colonial Christian perspective) to that of the Land, the work activates the site in a manner which acknowledges the sites deeper history and those denied customary practice and culture. Situated in a shelter on the edge of the carpark, this figurative gesture manifests in the physicality of site, the activation occurring through light, shadow and the perpetual rhythms of nature.
Location: M Shed at the entrance to String Bean Alley from the carpark. Map.
Special Event: Gesture (70º East) New Day Rising - performance event. 1-1.30pm, Sunday 23 October at M Shed
Note: Gesture (70º East) New Day Rising will remain on site until mid-2017
Watch: Steven Rhall talking about Gesture (70º East) New Day Rising.
Images courtesy the artist and Bryony Jackson.
