Manners, Habits and Other Received Ideas
Commissioned for the 19th Biennale of Sydney, Manners, Habits, and Other Received Ideas brings together over seven hundred pieces of cast Cinefoil to form six distinct sculptures. The fragments were made by pressing the matte, black foil into sections of existing public monument throughout the city of Sydney. The fragments are then re-arranged on steel frames that echo the architecture of the Victorian era rail yard in which they are exhibited, creating surreal, dramatic, and uncanny figures who share a logic of inversion. Shadows from the six sculptures are cast dramatically against the floor and walls of the space, inviting visitors to consider the performance of public memory.
Most public monument in Sydney commemorates figures of settler colonialism. Manners, Habits, and Other Received Ideas
dismantles these figures through fragmentation and mis-configuration, to remind visitors that the project of colonialism is not over, even if we neglect and ignore the monuments that have been erected in its honour.
The artists and six volunteers spent eight weeks gathering impressions from monuments and Victorian era buildings throughout the city of Sydney. The act of casting forms from existing monuments was a performance in itself that re-activated these often overlooked sculptures in the public imagination.