Roadside crash marker programmes in Australia, run by state governments, aim to raise awareness of road safety by identifying where fatal and serious injury crashes have occurred. The markers are standard guideposts, coloured black or red with a symbolic reflector. I know something of these. As an accident victim, I can recall seeing flashes of my life history intertwined with the landscape as my car rolled and buckled. They are hazy, distorted, unnerving visions seen in the face of mortality, and I cannot forget them.
In this project, I deal with my inability to forget physical detail and incident. I reinterpret the torrent of random ?snapshots? that piled into my mind by creating new memories based on the locale of the fates of others. New memories controlled though accidental, frenetic layering until ?peace? is found. A deliberate, stage-managed reinterpretation of the viciousness of circumstance.
The images act as a lone celebration of both imagined and real states. A mourning and tribute, coupled with an appreciation of my own destiny. Standing beside the markers and creating still images as incomplete personal narratives, I investigate itinerary, identity and interaction.
