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Canberra Today 14°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: Barbed and Ready

“THE Barbed Maze” is an immersive installation by local artists Denise Higgins and Gary Smith, currently on display at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space.

Reflections in the maze
Reflections in the maze

This disorientating collaborative work has finally come to life for Canberra audiences after a substantial crowd-funding campaign, followed by a fortnight spent furnishing the gallery walls with barbed wire, mirror panelling and video surveillance equipment.

Sound mirror in the maze
Sound mirror in the maze

A journey for each individual to embark upon, “The Barbed Maze” is an experience designed to evoke both terror and wonder. Moving through the labyrinthine environment the viewer becomes increasingly aware of one’s own physicality, pursued by a sense of distress or neurosis. In addition to this a series of 5 hidden chambers are positioned throughout the maze, a chance for the viewer to interact with the hostile compound itself. Despite the artists’ attempt to include these varied alcoves as a means to visualise the recesses of the human psyche, they perhaps achieve the very opposite in each moment of respite, alleviating any notion of restriction imposed by the barbed fortress.

Although Higgins and Smith have suggested that it is not their intent to comment on sites such the Nauru Detention Centre it is impossible not to see the misshapen reflection of Australian modernity gazing back at you within this installation.

“The Barbed Maze” is in fact a conjuring of sorts, a visual manifestation of the secular boundaries we impose upon ourselves, and one another.

Anja Loughhead is currently Writer in Residence at M16 Artspace, Griffith.

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