Salt, aluminium, three-dimensionally printed PLA plastic, acetal plastic, acrylic plastic, motor, stainless steel, fasteners
2.1m x 2.1m x 2.1m
Salt has always been central to civilisation. Throughout time it has been harvested, traded, mined, warred over, and taxed. It has been fundamental as a food preservative for millenia, and used in various religious ceremonies across cultures. It also has broad uses in industrial, chemical and agricultural applications. In this and many other ways salt has also been a pillar of economic systems across the globe: in parts of Africa salt was used as actual currency, and the English word salary comes from the Latin word for salt.
”The Salt Curtain”, initially created for an exhibition in a retired bank building, activates salt as its central material. Whilst salt’s pivotal role throughout history grounds it very much in the current world situation – economic instability, the climate crisis, a global pandemic, hunger and ill-health, and numerous conflicts – this work looks forward, optimistically speaking to a future of localised, circular economies: a place of communities working together to everyone’s benefit, of no-one being left behind, of a world that has stabilised and that is, finally, slowly but surely reflourishing.
Images by the artist.
This project is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.