Atlantis

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MARS Gallery, Melbourne

8 October – 1 November 2009

Elizabeth Presa

Materials: plaster, milk, salt, animal bones, cloth, glass.

Dimensions: Variable

‘Beyond the three outer harbours there was a wall, beginning at the sea and running right round in a circle, at a uniform distance of fifty stades from the largest ring and harbour and returning in on itself at the mouth of the canal to the sea. This wall was densely built up all round with houses and the canal and the large harbour were crowded with vast numbers of merchant ships from all quarters, from which rose a constant din of shouting and noise day and night.’

Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written in 360 BC, contain the earliest references to Atlantis.

My Atlantis is constructed from the detritus of the day – household and garden waste, things collected from the gutters, sensations, textures, words, phrases and thoughts.  Hollowed out and crystallised these remnants of life become the architectural shells and hieroglyphs of their own metropolis.

Catalog essay: Atlantis in our midst, by Jean-Luc Nancy