89-91 Lake Street
Commissioned and presented by the Perth Festival
Lake Street was devised around the principle of extreme climatic polarities with each chosen house reflecting the manipulation of disparate elements.
Number 89 revealed a series of rooms concentrating on dry heat – the first room contained a camel’s skeleton growing salt crystals, the antipodean antithesis of the grass. The second room contained a stream of red sacred sand, which slowly flowed through an overhead light fitting, resulting in a cone of fine sand that eventually covered a chair and table situated in the middle of the room. Finally the last room was charred black and an oscillating light revealed a formalised construction of burnt limbs of trees in the middle of the room.
After three phases of dry heat the installation entered the territory the pair is recognised for, grass. Sprouting branches of trees placed in the room were contrasted with the burnt remnants of the previous room. The first room in Number 91, the second house, continued a constant theme of bringing the exterior into the interior whereby grass was seeded onto almost every surface, water covered the floors and rained from the ceilings in constant drips. From a doorway a figure cast in grass emerged from the verdant wall. In the final room photosynthesis was implemented to imprint onto the grass a positive image of the exterior of the house within the growing grass.