radial sign (2021)
HD video projection, 2:33min looped
Installation view
240 x 240cm
"Radial Sign... is inspired by the idea that the only way to deal with the intangible and illusive is to substitute it with something handheld and graspable. Clouds drift in awkward and sometimes haphazard directions, as the artist alters their positions against the blue sky, shifting them like puzzle pieces. The elements are in dialogue, the sky, the clouds, the artist. The tricks of conspiring forces. Sammut’s work points to the medieval illustrations in the Augsburg Book of Miracles. The book presents historical evidence of the human desire to understand and explain the cosmic through the creation of speculative visual material. Examples include depictions of comets and meteor showers as swords or even flying reptiles... It is this very human centred view of all existence that Sammut interrogates with her work Radial Sign. The beauty here is in the attempt to understand. To comprehend the unknown with gesture and imitation." Nina Stromqvist, 2021
This work was developed with the support of an ArtsACT Homefront Grant. Photo credit: Andrew Sikorski