10 tonnes of atmosphere presses on you.
Enter your own personal space elevator. Tsiolkovsky’s star ladder made manifest.
But forget newtonian physics, this column gives you flight via pure thought, pure imagination. Gaze into the sky, find the rips in the fabric, launch, accelerate, dodge the veil of space junk around this world and cast your imagination into the cosmos. Feel the earth evaporate beneath your feet. All thats solid melts into air. Faster than the speed of light, faster than time, faster than reality. What awaits you there in the infinite beyond?

Personal Space Elevator was an experiment for me. I had taken part on this event 2 years before and I wasn’t motivated to do another abstract painting as a follow up to Safe Place. So, almost as a joke I submitted Personal Space Elevator. PSE was nothing more than a footprint of a imaginary lift that could transport a participant to outer space and lo! It was accepted. I was and remain under no illusions that this would be a difficult work playing to a skeptical audience and full credit to the long time curator of Swell Currumbin, Natasha Edwards, for giving it a go. The audience for Swell 2024, as is the case with most of these type of outdoor/beach side events is not what you would call a serious art crowd and the follow up comments on the Swell FB page reflected that. Lots of quotes along the lines of “Yeah, Na” or “Is painting identifying as sculpture now?”. What was interesting to me as the artist responsible for this install was how invigorated I felt from these comments. For the most part these type of walk up audiences say nothing, so to be privy to their true thoughts on a public forum was extremely interesting and in an odd way vindicating. Thanks to Kyle Barnes and Kate Miller for the additional pictures featured below