John Wardle

The whole idea of it was to translate our perception of where we are and other places in the world, which is why it's called Somewhere Others.

So we wanted to transport people from Venice to Australia, and particularly Bruny Island.

And we did that through mirrors and film in this encased...

object and when we're over there on wipe the interior of it with eucalyptus oil so there's even a an olfactory sense of being there and it did something to people and made them laugh the i've got videos of people crowds of people just forcing their way because you walked into this object and out and laughing now

How hard is it to do that with a piece of architecture?

I decided I needed a Venetian portal because the rest of it was Australian.

So a guy with the biggest lungs on Murano blew that big red glass vial that then sits on a beautiful steel stand.

You're halfway through the journey and you look out through this vial and there's a little mirror in the end of it that takes you back to where you started.

I mean, the construct of things kind of...

I mean, hilarious.

Yeah.

And so he had a thing of sociability, the shared experience of walking through, and then intimacy.

So the idea of the mask, and we had, I just had this idea of Kelly's view of the Australian landscape was, if you look at Nolan's Kelly series, that when seeing the Australian landscape through that rough cut rectangle of his mask, was that perception of landscape.

But we're over in Venice, so there's that tight anthropometric fit of the Venetian mask.

So there's this beautiful carved mask, which is part Kelly's

rectangle but the fit is the the venetian mask that fits perfectly a single human face and you stand there with queues of people behind you looking through and you've got that all to yourself so again that's that idea that comes out of these ranges of experiences we can provide extraordinary mind john yeah overthinking you think

And they draw their own stories into it.

add to chapter to the story of the place well i think if something can evoke curiosity curiosity is that instinctive first impression first whatever we're either not curious or we're engaged with it and we move toward it because we're curious and i think if it's got that about it that you don't really require a complete understanding of something but if it does draw you in and i and kind of encourages it to ask questions and

Well, appreciating the skills of others runs into the practice too.

I've got some very fine partners.