Cresciani’s interest is in objects, structures, buildings and the urban landscape, and in particular the increasing number of ‘non-places’ that fill our environment. Waste centres, derelict service stations, road works, car parks and abandoned factories. Beauty is found in these places of repulsion, neglect or obsolescence. Inverted images of rubbish emphasise the negative side of consumerism, like an x-ray points out disease. Cracked car windows and night road works are a metaphor for the central place roads play in capitalism.
A western Sydney car recycling yard houses hundreds of smashed cars, row upon row with their bonnets up. Car-lovers stroll through the space to purchase spare parts. The interesting patterns on the cracked safety glass look like street networks seen from above, recalling Sydney’s current road expansions cutting new paths through cities, suburbs and the bush, bringing people and products together. Capitalism depends so much on our ever-expanding road networks. They define movement and life and gobble up land and livelihoods.
Through the shattered glass we see the dark nature of rampant consumerism and the devastation of our environment that is required to sustain it. Both the smashed cars and our road networks share redundancy. The black and white images reference our impaired perception of what we are doing to our world: For now we see through a glass, darkly.
The exhibition continues November 1 – November 17, 2019
Wednesday – Friday 1-6, Saturday – Sunday 11-4
