Photographs as representations of past times and places also create their own wake, like snags caught in the flow of time. They can emerge upstream in the flow of time, evoking a mythological resonance with the now; a nostalgia for a lost past, a portent for a possible future.
Such is the series Simon Cuthbert has entitled Alma mater, photographs of the abandoned Seven Hills campus of the Queensland College of the Art (QCA). Simon studied photography and printmaking at Seven Hills from 1982-84, and returned again to his old school for the first time in 2011 and again in 2012 to complete this series. In the exterior images of Alma mater, we see a building in the process of being reclaimed by vines and vegetation in the process of becoming the ruin of a lost civilisation.
Ignored and reviled except as sites for development, in the same way that many have viewed marginal environments such as mangroves and wetlands, abandoned buildings loom large in the imagination as the wilderness of the urban and industrial landscape
The site was abandoned in 2001, when the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University relocated to South Bank in Brisbane, and eventually demolished in 2015 to make way for the Clear View Urban Village. It is not just the passing from the urban landscape of this institution that has become shrouded in mythology, but also its genesis.
We invite you to join us for the opening event on Thursday, 9th November from 6pm - 8pm at POP Gallery.
Exhibition Dates: Tuesday, 6th - Saturday, 13th November
Opening Hours: 10am to 4pm, Tuesday to Saturday
Where: POP Gallery, 381 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Vally, 4006