Installation to “takes root” in new location

Published: 27 Aug 2019

The giant cardboard installation inside Artspace Mackay is coming down, but it’s not disappearing.

Elements of it will live on in a pop-up studio in the City Centre and via prints created with the help of a road roller.

Following on from the success of Take Root (Colony): Project Another Country, internationally-acclaimed artists Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan will take up residency in the Mackay City Centre to re-work a section of the installation.

Cr Fran Mann said the artist duo would create a new work to be shown in other galleries around the world as well as a series of prints made from the cardboard installation.

“The Aquilizans have this amazing thing they do with their installations where they take some of one region’s cardboard structures and integrate it into the next place they visit,” Cr Mann said.

“Our installation in Mackay, for example, had elements from Christchurch, New Zealand in it,” she said.

The prints the duo will make are created by taking structures from Take Root (Colony) and making them 2D by running over them with a council road roller.

Once flat, the installation is reworked into collagraph plates which are then used to create a folio of prints that will become part of the permanent Mackay Regional Council Art Collection.

Mackay residents and visitors alike will have the opportunity to see the artists at work at their pop-up studio, 95 Victoria Street, for two weeks, with the studio being open to guests from today (Tuesday, August 27) to Friday (August 30) and Tuesday, September 3 to Friday, September 6, from 1pm to 4pm daily.

This is a wonderful opportunity to gain an insight into these internally-acclaimed artists’ practice and to speak directly with them about their recent Mackay community art project and art installation.