REBECCA ROSS

I began making these map collages in 2010 during an artist in residence I undertook in Wellington, New Zealand. During the residency I struck across an Atlas of New Zealand at a thrift store close to the studio. From that point, employing actual maps in my ‘exercises in mapping’ became an ongoing part of my work.

These works have been commissioned for exhibitions at the Embassy of Australia in Washington DC U.S.A. and HOTA Home of the Arts (on two separate occasions), and exhibited at the British School at Rome in Italy, and in Brisbane, Australia, at BMC Agency, Spiro Grace Art Rooms and the Churchie Art Award. They have been curated into the permanent art collections of the Mater Private Hospital and Northern Busway Tunnel in Brisbane, Gold Coast University Hospital in Southport, and a temporary public artwork in Platform at the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital Busway. These works are held in the collections of HOTA Home of the Arts Gallery, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, and private collections in Italy, Australia and New Zealand.

Navigating the personal and geopolitical, these works employ found maps and traditional cartography mediums including map pins and Glasochrom pencil. The stencil I use for the text works was purchased in Rome during a three month studio residency at the British School at Rome as the recipient of the Australia Council Studio. The use of text in my work was inspired by the a work of Italian concrete poet Ketty La Rocca that I saw at the MAXXI in Rome. From that point a whole new formation of work emerged. By rupturing and rearranging the visual and spatial relationships in the maps, these work look at the shifting climates and geographies of our time. Employing collage in their formation, the hand cut maps and text are spliced, pinned and glued together to create new landforms and cartographical scenes. Countries and borders, elevations and terrain are also amassed through a lens of personal recollection. The aerial perspective employed in these works pinpoint formative life experiences of being frequently airborne, and revisit memories of navigating the earth from the sky with my pilot parents and as a trainee pilot.