For the past five years Miller has been developing a series of mini-golf courses in response to actual events as they occur and each stage reflects information that reaches us through media which serves its own agenda. The situation in Iraq is an inflated example of the nature of ‘objective’ reporting and Miller combines the many one-sided reports of the war, available on the Internet and in newspapers, trying to find some sort of middle grounded ‘truth’. As a result, his works are an exercise in ‘Chinese whispers media’; stories upon stories, becoming further and further detached from truth known only to those who experience it first hand.

In The Dogs Bark but the Caravan Rolls On (Golf War #9) Miller has produced a highly sophisticated and aesthetic installation. The figurative element (of previous works) has given way to an Islamic pattern. The course strategy has become even more complicated as the concept of the work is completely derivative of its design. The current situation in Iraq is presented as a background buzz compared to a time when the operation’s merits were more a subject of sensational contention. For his Canberra exhibition, Miller considered moving on from the Golf War series, as it has been clearly established that the war in Iraq is a misguided disaster, however, the proverbial caravan continues to push on and so Miller feels compelled to follow through his charting of the enterprise. Perhaps it is more important to continue now than ever.

excerpt from catalogue essay by Cheree Mack

MIDDLEspace

Contextual Villains
Filtering Remnants

 

Above L: Himself Above R: Herself

“Understanding the imprint of past human behavior on the landscape provides powerful analogies for understanding the implications of human impact on the earth system in the future.” 

A statement used as a starting point for The Contextual Villains ongoing collaboration with scientists at The Australian National University's Department of Archaeology and Natural History.  A project in which scientific and artistic methodologies overlap in the exploration of time-scales that are generally beyond our everyday human capacity to perceive.  While also questioning the promise of high-tech scientific investigation to provide insights into our past.  Are we are perhaps more unclear now of who we are and where we are heading than when we relied on direct experience with the world unfiltered through a technological perspective?