CANBERRA Museum and Gallery’s interior may be closed for renovations until early May, but an unusual work has been developed by artist Hannah Quinlivan in the outside, at Gallery 4, to be on display day and night until July – you have to see it to believe it.

Quinlivan is a first class honours graduate from the ANU School of Art and Design, and news is to hand that one of her works, a large wire sculpture, hung from the ceiling over the top of a live salt drawing on a platform, created quite a stir recently at “Art Central” in Hong Kong.

In the site-specific CMAG work, Quinlivan takes the elements of a drawing and dissects them to sort and examine both process and outcome in a kind of 3-dimensional ‘drawing’ suspended from the ceiling. Her work will, as the weeks progress,  respond to the rhythms and variables of place, and intended to develop over the course of the four-month exhibition period.

This striking work  stands at the intersection of drawing, sculpture and installation and forms part of a series of site-specific ephemeral drawings Quinlivan has been making in Cambridge, Berlin, Hong Kong and Colorado in 2016-17.

The artist uses wire, adhesive tape, paint and steel rods to create lines, and salt on teh floor below to indicate the crystallisation of meaning and memory. An important component  can be found in the shadows thrown by the structures.

Quinlivan, who has been the recipient of a scholarship from the British Arts and Humanities Research Council, two Australia Council grants, a grant from the ACT Arts Fund to establish a graduate mentoring program, and artist residencies from East Pilbara to Singapore, Cambridge and Berlin, is now enrolled as a PhD candidate at the ANU.

“Anatomy of a drawing,” by Hannah Quinlivan, now on view in the outside Gallery 4, Civic Square show-case, Canberra Museum and Gallery, until July 30.