site 1 - July 2015 site 2 – November 2015

Bridget Kennedy - Choice Mate – Site 3

Depot 2 Gallery – 3.2.16 – 13.2.16beeswax, pigments, soil, found objects, gold leaf, fools gold, an ounce of gold, 2015

Choice Mate, an installation covering the gallery floor with thousands of small objects. They look like

rocks. Almost. But not quite.

Inspired by a month-long residency in Hill End ,NSW, this miniature landscape is made from ‘wax

effigies’ of real rocks: discarded remnants of the town’s gold mining past. This phrase evokes the

melancholic tang of loss. As well it should, for Choice Mate is a kind of memorial. And like all good

memorials it serves as a trigger of contemplation as well as commemoration.

Made primarily from beeswax, the ‘rocks’ are coloured with both earthy ochres and artificial

pigments. There is something just a little unsettling about the colour; something not quite right. I

don’t want my objects to be mistaken for the real thing. The deliberately heightened colours point

to the fact that my landscape is human-made. This microcosm is an invitation to consider the

impact our interventions have on the larger environment.

While at Hill End, I walked a lot. I became aware of how every inch of soil beneath me had been

turned over by human hands; crushed and eroded in search of treasure. I discovered that what

appeared to be ‘natural’ was actually the result of choices made: the decision to delve into the

earth in search of gold, the choice to destroy one thing of beauty in exchange for the chance of

finding another.

Choice Mate offers visitors this same conundrum. Each of the rocks may (or may not) contain some

genuine gold. Visitors may decide to ‘mine’ the work, stake a claim and take a piece home. In doing

this they will leave an indelible mark on this carefully constructed landscape, destroying its original

form. Or not. They may instead decide to leave the landscape intact.