Creations of Handheld Tile Landscapes for placement within the Fort Lane Precinct
If you look closely at the surfaces that make up the environment of Fort Lane, you will have discovered many hidden gems. The details of surfaces can tell us so much about an environment and evoke so many feelings in terms of how we respond to different spaces. Collective Landscape explores how materials can tell stories and bring people together through collection, creation, placement and exhibition. The experience offers opportunity for reflection of our diverse landscapes we reside within and build upon. Collective Landscape has been created in hope that the relationships between people and place can be strengthened. By connecting people with the physical surface details of the environment.
Collective Landscape is a response to the hidden surface detail within environments that usually go overlooked. Materials can share so much with us, if only we bring ourselves to connect with them. The experience begins with me, fitting glass tiles onto 600 bricks throughout Fort Lane, Fort Street and Jean Batten Place. These tiles will be placed over a 6 week period, slowly filling up sections of the precincts landscape, similar to the tide coming in as it would have when Fort Street was a foreshore.
100 people from all around Auckland will be invited to create a tile that will replace one of the glass tile bricks within the precinct. Each participant will be given a zine instructing them to collect a rock from where they reside, to use to make their tile. The rock will be a sample representing the landscape they come from.
The experience ends with an exhibition of all the collected rocks. Collective Landscape is for anyone who may visit the precinct, so that they may gain a sense of the diverse landscapes throughout Auckland and learn to create connections with their own material environments. Surfaces can be the storytellers of an environment.
