Wondermountain | Mud Maps

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Penrith Regional Gallery & Lewers Bequest, Penrith

by Andrew Frost

Driving on the freeways that skirt Sydney on the way to the Blue Mountains is the imposing structure known as the Light Horse Interchange. A ribboned expanse of concrete overpasses and interchanges, this meeting between freeways from north, south, east and west commemorates the famed WW1 cavalry unit but in its naming also gives an incongruous historical context to what is otherwise a monument to the contemporary world. Exhibiting the work of 13 Australian and Chinese artists, Wondermountain explores the modern non-place and its context in Australia and China, from the pointed political commentary of Philjames and a repainted landscape that now features the Three Gorges Dam to Yang Yonglian’s Song Dynasty, an animation centred on skyscrapers that are home to thousands of residents.

Another kind of mapping takes place in Mud Maps, an exhibition that encourages visitors to interact with a social mapping project by nominating points in local and international locations that have a personal meaning – from shortcuts in Penrith to good places to eat in Bangkok. Featuring the work of Vanessa Berry, Keg de Souza, Nacelles Jubelin and Guan Wei, the exhibition “…encourages audiences to stop and think about the points marked on the map, and to consider how we navigate and make sense of the world through map making.”