Current Exhibitions
123 Days Away by Adriane Hayward & Aaron Burton
Souvenirs impulsively purchased and snapshots ritually performed by travellers and tourists alike are attempts to capture a prized moment and to progress an idealised narrative. Photographing and consuming justify and structure a tourist’s itinerary. The retained objects and images are, however, arguably limited to a few recognizable signifiers, exotic locations, ritual experiences and iconic monuments. Evidence that we saw the “must see” and did the “must do”. The traveler inevitably returns home to present their collection. The mementos are proof of the journey and condense the multifaceted experience into a romantic script. Forget the airport delays and arguments over money. Remember the sun setting behind an exotic temple.
On completing their undergraduate studies, as thousands of young Australians do, Aaron and Adriane folded their domestic obligations into a backpack and fled overseas with no date of return. 123 Days Away captures and reconstructs the couple’s rite of passage traveling through Southeast Asia. The resulting body of work is both a celebration and critique of modern travel. Their experiences are ironically distant from the rhetoric of Lonely Planet or the glamour of Travel Photography. Their path pursues an honesty and fascination of place and culture inspired by the likes of Bruce Chatwin and Sarah Macdonald. Having graduated together from Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art, both Aaron and Adriane draw on their respective disciplines to construct a unique visual narrative of their one hundred and twenty-three days away.
Souvenirs become symbols of our experience, and our only physical reference to a particular place or time. Adriane disregards the ‘traditional’ souvenir, she is more attracted to objects normally overlooked or discarded. Objects like bus tickets, plastic spoons, miniature shampoo bottles and pieces of string are perhaps more authentic mementos of a location than key rings, tea towels and t-shirts. Returning home, Adriane utilizes a digital scanner to transform her souvenirs into an intricately collaged narrative that questions both our perception of mementos and the veracity of our memories.
As the male of a travelling couple often does, Aaron held his SLR close-by wherever they went. The framed fragments he presents us with script an unconventional narrative of the couple’s ‘rite of passage’. Written into the frame are excerpts from his online travel journal, providing insights into a broader narrative at play. The still certainty of his framed images contrasts with a series of erratic memories trapped in motion-video and forever looped within a digital frame.
