Reef: Drawing in the Expanded Field

In this article we introduce a body of research on drawing in the extended field and discuss a recent outcome – Reef, an installation at the Tin Shed gallery, Sydney. The research agenda has evolved from architectural sketch drawing, where rapidly drawn marks capture evocative presences yet are also coded, analytical, and need to be read. Lines refer to scale, form and materials in space beyond them, at the same time as recording the authors’ imaginative projection into those worlds. The research extends the open, evocative capacity of drawing to installation art works, of which Reef is the second in a series exploring the landscape phenomena of seismic shock. Reef is an experimental installation that exists simultaneously in three overlapping dimensions: material space, virtual space and sound space. It is a sketch of a small section of seabed in Kaikōura, Aotearoa New Zealand. The Kaikōura reef is the visible part of a vast landscape that drops several kilometres below the sea’s surface and connects to an extensive canyon system that marks the junction of the pacific and Australian tectonic plates. Vast forces were released in the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake causing the submarine landscape to jolt upwards, and with it the reef. This project uses a hybrid of cast concrete miniature sketches, sound sketches and sketches in VR and AR to capture the ambiguous scale and strange presence of this landscape. Visitors to the gallery are immersed in a single spatial sketch, composed of a cloud of elements that operate as grains of graphite in a rapidly sketched mark. These are an array that morphs from castings of the rock surface to gestural concrete sketches to digital interpretations. The reading of these sketches is augmented by overlapping soundscapes and images from a virtual sketch environment, creating a multi-sensory 3-dimensional drawing that surrounds the participant. The Reef installation highlights shifts in notions of drawing and its research agency.