Jon TARRY

born 1958, Hungerford, United Kingdom
lives and works Perth, Western Australia

Berlin is the central work in Jon Tarry’s sculptural series titled SMASHED. This series continues the artist’s ongoing discussion and investigation about ideas of geography, mapping, landscape and space in contemporary culture.
 
Excerpt taken from SMASHED – Exhibition catalogue – Author Julian Goddard

This series of wall and floor based sculptures are titled and based on the layout and patterns of airports runways from around the world. Airports have always been an object of fascination for artists. As symbols of modernity, they are constantly being represented in contemporary art. Tarry uses the airport as another way of describing the modern experience of space. For Tarry, airports are like nodes of experience – they map the globe. Berlin, Marco Polo (Venice) and Essendon airports and the other five represented in the exhibition are entry and exit points for different cultural experiences.
 
Airports are how we move through the varying cultures of the world - they are a device, an instrument - almost a machine – used to interact with the new global space. They represent a network by which people ‘use’ the world through modern transport. They are markers of the international space. A new world space much smaller than it has been in the past and open to growing numbers of people. These new works of Tarry are part of a continuing investigation of the way space is related to culture and the way space is constructed and reconstructed by differing uses and ways of representation.

Other selected artwork acquisitions