M1 - Homeward

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BACKGROUND In exploring the idea of the mediated landscape and place-representation of the Freeway/Motorway, M1-Homeward draws on French anthropologist Marc Augé's work on places and non places (Auge, 1992) and more recent creative exhibition work curated by Tacita Dean and Jeremy Millar ('Place', 2005). To date, this area of creative practice research has centred on photography, video and installation. Animation, as a visual representational language of space, has not been comprehensively explored in relation to landscape. M1 addresses this research gap. CONTRIBUTION M1-Homeward is a caricatured animated recreation of a moving Australian roadside landscape. In particular it references the monotonous landscape experienced on the drive along sections of the M1 freeway in Victoria. The work re-inscribes the language of limited animation's use of repeat panning backgrounds from the 1960s. Originally developed as a response to economic constraints and largely attributed to Hanna Barbera studios, the repeat panning background abbreviates the landscape where its meaning is familiar and comprehensible but spatially absurd. M1-Homeward plays on this absurdity, exposing the similarity in spectatorial points of view of the screen and the car window to make explicit our disconnection from the landscape in certain situations, and commenting on the the space as non-place conception posited by by Auge. SIGNIFICANCE M1-Homeward was included in the 2013 exURBAN screens exhibition '(Good evening, and welcome to) The Discrete Image' curated by Matthew Perkins and Vince Dziekanheld. The exhibition was held in June/July 2013 across the Cube 37 Gallery, Frankston Arts Centre and Frankston City Centre. It attracted significant patronage, particularly through guided walking tours of the installations. M1- Homeward was subsequenly included in the launch of 'Drawing Film' 2013 curated by Suzie Attiwill for the RMIT Design Institute.