Two Way Traffic 2013

Summary

Artist Statement Michelle Hamer maps contemporary social beliefs, fears and aspirations through language and place. Familiar and often ironic, the works capture complex in-between moments that characterise everyday life. The boundaries and barriers that she explores oscillate between fast and slow, past and present, personal and political, and become markers of rarely captured but revealing moments in time. Her hand-stitched and drawn works occupy a space between 2D and 3D and are based on both ‘found’ text and her own photographs. ‘Two Way Traffic’ depicts a paste-up of AFL player Nicky Winmar amidst inner suburbia and a bright red sky. Winmar’s passionate response to racist retorts during the 1993 Collingwood–St Kilda Match at Victoria Park is important and iconic. Positioned around a tight corner in the backstreets of Abbotsford, the defiant temporary artwork, sits adjacent to suggestive instructional traffic signage. ‘Two Way Traffic’ allows us to consider problematic and proud historic moments, and how embedded contemporary issues and language are within the urban environment. Michelle Hamer