Sadie Chandler – Buildings and Infrastructure
Charles Nodrum Gallery 30 April – 21 May, 2022
https://www.charlesnodrumgallery.com.au/exhibitions/sadie-chandler-buildings-and-infrastructure/







Buildings and Infrastructure
They say that they’re “building a better future” with huge road works, rail upgrades and other building projects. It’s very noisy and inconvenient but, they also say, it will all be worth it. Some of these major building works have been happening at night and keeping people awake. I thought I could hear machinery all through the night, till eventually I realised that it was my own heartbeat thumping, probably due to dreaming of all the modems, wires, remote controls, electric cables, plumbing pipes, and gadgets that surround me and complicate my life.
This exhibition, Buildings and Infrastructure, at Charles Nodrum Gallery, is about those fields of pipes, tubes, cables and drains; the bits that might be transformers, compressors and connectors. It’s the stuff inside the walls, under the floorboards, above the ceiling. It’s there all the time, but unseen.
We all want our own personal space and yet we crowd together in cities for safety, convenience and community and plan our ideal lives with infrastructure that connects everything with everyone. Cities, like bodies and technologies, depend on and provide this connectivity – but, to make things work, sometimes messy connections are necessary. Occasionally I’ll meet a plumber or an electrician and am amazed at the way they see and make things. Their work may often look messy but sometimes it’s elegant in both conception and execution.
I’ve been making hand painted and drawn wallpapers for the past 15 years. They are made from many parts that appear to form ongoing patterns yet there is no repetition as every part is unique. I like the way these works are large, covering walls from floor to ceiling and from edge to edge. Yet at the same time, they recede because, as background, wallpapers are part of a room. Made with a multitude of parts, these all-over wall coverings are ongoing or potentially unending accumulations. There is no singularity. Everything is related, inter-dependant and connected.
Sadie Chandler 2022