May 2007
FirstDraft
Sydney, New South Wales

Windows have a transitive nature: during the day, they usher in the airy surrounds to make habitable our living spaces, but with the fading light, they allow the warmth of our domestic interiority to seep onto the street. On the footpath, a delicious tension arises from the mingling of the familiar with the foreign: as we stand in the dim wash of the theatre of dreams made from the delicate clinks of cutlery, the poetry in the silent moments of strangers beckons, but the reticence of the impenetrable interface dictates a distance that diffuses the vision in mystery and irresolute longing.

The savouring of such moments is problematic in our current cultural environment.

Intended for installation amongst the residential cityscape, Safe Windows are  light-boxes that evokes the compelling sensory experience created by windows at night; in this case however, the viewer is able to linger and is not at risk of being accused of a social misdemeanour. The work is a reaction to the paranoia and prurience in our culture that has usurped many beautiful, gentle tendencies by distorting them into ones of deviance. It is also very much a reaction against contemporary art’s complicity in perpetuating these distortions.