About the project

Construction Drawings 02: 2003
is a monumental temporary art project by respected South Australian artist Jonathan Dady. The work responds to the Gallery's historic North Terrace entrance using the digital AutoCAD program to construct a three-dimensional architectural model built entirely from scaffolding. Construction Drawings 02: 2003 marks attention to the drawing process, which in this instance involves the translation of an existing building into a digital two-dimensional form, which in turn is reconstructed in scaffolding.

Dady has reconfigured the building's essential architectural elements - reducing them to a series of lines and planes, and subtly manipulating them. The work raises questions about the very act of drawing, such as how does perspective convey the illusion of space, and what exactly is the relationship between the two-dimensional image and three-dimensional reality? The artist has written: 'The technological processes of computer-aided design have significantly opened up this process [of architectural drawing], allowing a building to be almost fully realised in virtual space and ... to be experienced/inhabited from remote locations ... Drawing in this virtual realm has become an extension of our spatial experience.'

Artist's Statement

My work over the last decade has developed from smaller studio based work in both 3D and 2D towards a hybrid which deals with drawing as object in space. The past five years have seen the development of ideas to architectural scales that seek to mutate the design process by realising ‘propositional drawings’ on real space at actual scale. The proposition becoming the real.

The work being proposed is to be a development of the spatial, ergonomic and architectural themes of recent work with a particular emphasis on our human perception of our habitats and, by extension, their geographic context.

As with any drawing the possibilities of interpretation and redescription within the language of the medium becomes an irresistible departure from a starting point.

This more expressive approach to [or departure from] a building’s concrete existence will be a significant development of the mechanical language of computer aided design used in Construction Drawings, a recent work at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia. In this last work a computer-aided auto-CAD rendition of the building’s architectural lines acts as the theoretical and physical basis for the subsequent scaffolding structure, now more properly seen as an analogue of the building; both the computer generated drawing and the scaffolding occupying a ‘propositional’ status in the development and realisation of architecture.

Drawing in architectural terms is usually an analogue for a building; a codified form that is literally a written version of a 3-dimensional object. The technological processes of computer aided design have significantly opened up this process allowing a building to be almost fully realised in virtual space and as an extension, be experienced/inhabited from remote locations; the viewer can literally wander around a building at will. Drawing in this virtual realm has become an extension of our spatial experience. It is this virtual architectural, drawn space that I am attempting to collide with the real.

The nature of the proposed project is probably best seen as an act of drawing.

For the broader public this I believe will be a fascinating look at the actual human space objectively seen and how smaller compartmental spaces relate to a whole; in effect a diagram you can walk through and hopefully sense or wonder at its logic or intent. This work, although speaking about a propositional state, will simultaneously be a very large and dynamic fact; both in scale and distance.

Talk
Tuesday 13 May at 12.45 pm
The artist will give a lunchtime talk about Construction Drawings 02: 2003.
Everyone welcome.

Media Release
Click below to access
as a pdf document or as a microsoft word document