Talented WA artist Erin Coates has been commissioned to re-shape the geography of the PICA spaces through an ambitious and grand scale installation, inspired by the artist’s background in urban climbing and interest in architecture. Coates creates a new landscape inside PICA, connecting the ground and first floors with a 7 metre high mountainous structure housing a micro-cinema and surrounded by wall drawings, a 3D film and an interactive climbing room.
For this project Coates draws a fluid relationship between drawing, 3-dimensional structures and moving image. Each element interacts with another: the towering central architectural sculpture is formed from the tessellating lines based on the points of contact made during her climbs; recordings of bodies moving across built forms generate the shapes of cast climbing holds in the gallery; and large diagrammatic wall drawings reveal a matrix of invisible routes and information layered over architecture and public art throughout the city.
KINESPHERE is a major solo project that uses utopic, absurdist and guerrilla strategies to find new physical interactions with everyday environs and to critically challenge the way we are patterned to read and use the built environment. It is a significant new project by a Western Australian artist at a pivotal point in her career.