Tolarno Galleries is pleased to present Peter Hennessey's third solo exhibition
Here be dragons / Hic sunt dracones.
"Hic sunt dracones is a medieval Latin phrase meaning 'dragons are here'. Early cartographers would place this phrase over areas of their maps that were blank. These were places that were unexplored or literally unknown. There might have been some suspicion that strange beasts lurked there but really it was more about the lack of knowledge. They knew something was there but had no idea what. I guess that made it dangerous.
In the modern world we have no room for dragons, no place for blank spaces on maps. Technology brings us a sense that everywhere is mapped and available to us. The ubiquitous smart phone insures that we always know where we are and where 'where' is."
Peter Hennesey 2014
This exhibition brings together a group of works that look at the different ways in which the world is examined, mapped and explored. The works operate at a variety of scales and in a space between sculpture and architecture; and abstraction and narrative.
‘In all of the works,’ says Peter Hennessey, ‘we see society's desire to eliminate any dragons from modern, digital cartography. There is the promise of no blank space, no unmapped terrain where dragons might lurk. Yet for all our GPS satellites and 'streetview' tourism, the black box fight recorders and deep sea submarines remind us that the dragons will not disappear that easily. When we lose something, it is still not so easy to find. And within our cities, our experiences are still so often defined by our interactions with the shifting unmappable flows of people rather than the buildings.’
Born in 1968, Peter Hennessey lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. He completed a Bachelor of Architecture (Hons) at RMIT University, Melbourne in 1995 where he also lectured in digital media studies and co-founded The Basement Project, an artist run space with Patricia Piccinini.
His work investigates ‘objects that we all know well – but only virtually, through media’. At a time when we are increasingly obsessed with all things virtual, Hennessey creates something physical. His models of inaccessible objects (spacecraft, military and scientific material, GPS navigation satellites …) are as accurate as he can make them but can never be mistaken for the real thing.
‘I want the viewer to be able to have a physical experience of the object while still being able to experience the absence of the real thing.’
Peter Hennessey has participated in a number of museum exhibitions. In 2010 his work was included in the
The Beauty of Distance, 17th Biennale of Sydney. In 2015 the University of Queensland Museum of Art, Brisbane will present the first major survey of his work.
Press release courtesy Tolarno Galleries.