Extensions of a No-Place, by Peter Nelson, at Flinders Street Gallery, is an exhibition of drawings, sculptures, video and text, that explore the landscape of an imaginary world.
With 35 connecting works on paper, Nelson presents a large-scale, disjointed map of this No-Place. The multi-panel work lets us study the details of architectural structures floating in space, and also envelops viewers in a fragmented view of an unplanned, borderless realm.
In the back room of the gallery, sculptures of potential buildings from this world sit looming in the darkened space. Using projection onto and through these sculptures, inhabitants emerge, wandering endlessly through the buildings and onto the gallery walls.
With references to various systems of landscape construction, including Chinese literati painting, the picturesque, utopian architectual design, and Real Time Strategy computer games, Extensions of a No-Place evokes a futuristic landscape where familiar symbols are rearranged into fictional forms, and in it we are captivated, balancing between the virtual and non-virtual, the familiar and the unknown, and reality and the imagination.
Peter Nelson, Extensions of a No-Place (Panel 28), mixed media on paper, 56 x 76 cm, 2011
Peter Nelson, Extensions of a No-Place (Panel 15), mixed media on paper, 56 x 76 cm, 2011
Peter Nelson, Extensions of a No-Place, Plexiglas Sculpture, 2011
Extensions of a No-Place
May 30 to June 16, 2012
Flinders Street Gallery