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.

Based on several of the crime scene photographs, I created two kinetic assemblages featuring miniature domestic interiors, each housed inside a 1950s metal bathroom cabinet. Although the interiors recreate the rooms depicted in the photographs, the murder victims are absent. Instead, each assemblage captures the moments leading up to the crime. When the works are wound, moving shadows of figures pass across the window blinds, evoking classic film noir of the 1940s and 1950s and creating a sense that a crime is 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