Artists statement

'Tip Test' was originally part of an installation of sculptural works shown at West Space as part of 'Stranger than Fiction' curated by Joanna Kitto. The work explored altered plant growth, landfill chemistry and quarrying at the Darebin Parklands and across Naarm/Melbourne. Installed across the southern windows of the gallery was a long piece of sprung metal unfurled and secured with brackets to the wall. There were three works-on-paper mounted with magnets to the steel. Each of these is an oversized, horizontal litmus test of the leachate ponds at Darebin Parklands. These works were produced by impregnating paper with PH sensitive dye before they were dipped on site into the ponds. Two small ziplock bags of steel and bluestone swarf and an inverted photograph by local photographer Michael Oxer of the Parklands before it was replanted in 1980 hang from the metal and surrounding architecture. The other work, 'Total Dissolved Solids', is a collection of 8 chrome hubcaps from cars produced between the 1950s-70s. The hubcaps are suspended and connected with magnets by threaded steel in the form of a chromium compound molecule\ that has been found in the soil at the Parklands.

'Bathtub Analogy', a performance lecture was developed for a symposium alongside 'Stranger than Fiction'. This performance lecture was later adapted into a video work commissioned by the City of Darebin.

Artist Bio

Rosie Isaac is an artist, writer, radio broadcaster and teacher based in Naarm. The act of reading – silently, aloud, to someone or together – comes up again and again in her writing and sculptures.