Kerrie Poliness

The work Black O Wall Drawings 1-6 is a box containing a set of instruction books, black felt-tipped markers, a piece of chalk and some string. The instruction books and other items enable other people to produce large abstract geometric designs that are drawn directly onto wall surfaces. There are six different drawing designs, one instruction book for each design.

The instructions introduce an element of variation upon the works, which ensures that each drawing is always different to another. This is because the instructions require that the person making the work guess rather than measure most of the geometry.

Although the structure for each design (via the instructions) is always the same, each drawing is always different.  A ‘particular’ distortion of the geometric web of lines is generated by the estimations of the person who makes the work.

The size of each drawing is also variable and is determined by the size of the wall that it is to be drawn on.

A small shift in place and method can cause quite different outcomes. The parameters of these drawings are a simple way to illustrate this force, which operates in every form of growth that we know. It is the nature of how crystals grow, why snowflakes are all different, etc. Because the nature of nature is such that a small shift within very tight parameters is a unique statement. This is why each person who follows the instructions carefully will create a unique drawing. Their own version of the work takes shape on the wall.

Kerrie Poliness 2006

Courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne

NOTE: All six of Kerrie Poliness’s Black O Wall Drawings were installed for this exhibition at Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Also Black O Wall Drawing 6 was installed in the Gallery's Rear Window space on 40 Moray Place at the same time.