Liz Lester
Bachelor of Fine Arts
Urban Decay
Through my artwork I want to inform the audience of the urban lifestyle, culture and the grittiness of the city life. I attempt to capture the beauty that is hidden and unappreciated within the decaying aspects of the city. My work follows a journey, partly physical, partly mental which comments on the decaying beauty of forgotten city features. I present the disintegration of architecture and objects which can accurately symbolize the power of humans to destroy and control the life span of a landscape. I feel a building can still embody life after it is forgotten. A site and object can hold a memory and have a remaining identity even if destroyed. A site I specifically concentrated on is the abandoned Dunlop Factory in Alexandria, Sydney. It’s a site which has been abandoned for nearly 10 years and over time has been destroyed. Rain weathers away at the timber frames, corrodes the tin roof and floods a space. Dust builds up on shelves, cracks move up the wall as the building slowly sinks into the ground and mud covers the floor like a carpet. And then the humans enter the space and this is where the main destruction begins. Windows get smashed, staircases get burnt and spray paint gets thrown onto the walls. The building in a way becomes a canvas for creative and adventurous minds. I want to reflect on the disintegration of this building by having a garment that is functional, aesthetically pleasing, new, and slowly destroy it. The pristine garment represents what the factory once was like when it was running. The garment I made is a long white dress and turns into a shriveled up piece of cloth. I deconstruct the dress step by step. First I attack it with chalk, then blue wet paint is splattered and then spray paint. Next mud is thrown onto the garment and rubbed into it. Lastly it is burnt from the bottom up leaving hardly any remains. This process illustrates the effect and power of destruction. The rotting of the garment correlates with the impact of urban decay.