Retallack Thompson

FINALIST

‘Through to more’

The hot-rolled steel panels veiling the entrance of the Faro Restaurant are continued in a fabric tapestry. Additional openings in the wall are suggested through the peeling and warping of the panels. From afar the effect is convincing, however up close the warmth of the tapestry’s materiality subverts expectations of a hard and unforgiving material.

The new openings rendered on the tapestry section of steel panels allude to a potential space beyond. It is one that can never be accessed, and is purposely left inarticulate so we continue to predict what could be beyond. The tapestry is an antithesis to the sublime scale of Boullée’s Cenotaph to Newton and the complexity of Tinguely’s Memorial to the Sacred Wind or the Tomb of a Kamikaze - it is a single opening(s). It is humane in scale, simple in form and full of the promise of the inconceived.