Suburban Noir exhibition
30 November 2013 – 6 April 2014

Curator Peter Doyle invited 14 Australian visual artists to create artworks in response to crime scene photographs taken in postwar Greater Sydney between 1954 and 1964 and held in the Justice and Police Museum’s forensic archive. The resulting works are featured in the Suburban Noir exhibition at the Museum of Sydney.

Inspired by several of the crime scene photographs, I created two kinetic assemblages featuring miniature domestic interiors, each housed inside a 1950s tin bathroom cabinet. Although the interiors recreated the scenes depicted in the photographs, the murder victims were absent. Instead, each assemblage suggested the moments immediately before a crime. When the works are wound, the shadows of figures outside pass across the window blinds, suggesting that events are about to unfold.

The exhibition includes works by Vanessa Berry, Dallas Bray, Rhett Brewer, Charles Cooper, Theresa Darmody, Bruce Latimer, Michael Lewy, Frank Littler, Reg Mombassa, Peter O’Doherty, Ken Searle, Susannah Thorne, and Anne Wallace.

1. The Stalker, 2013, 35x29x14cm, mechanical assemblage
2-5. The Stalker, details
6. The Tryst, 2013, 35x29x14cm, mechanical assemblage
7-9. The Tryst, details

The Stalker, detail – work in motion