Diana Baker Smith
Movement Reconstructions No 1-3
2022
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
54 x 81cm
Photographer: Lucy Parakhina
With the photographic series Movement Reconstructions, Diana Baker Smith depicts the choreography of a sculpture: Margel Hinder’s monumental Growth Forms, 1958-59. Originally conceived for a building on Sydney’s Pitt Street, this large-scale modernist work sought to evoke those unseen energies that propel the world. While the sculpture was never intended to move, it has been relocated many times over the years, subject to forces of cultural aspiration and urban development in the city.
Two of Baker Smith’s photographs depict an intricate maquette of Growth Forms, Hinder’s experiment combining geometry and poetry, which she cradles carefully in gloved hands. The third image reveals a section of the sculpture in closeup, its stippled surface crisscrossed with ratchet straps, secured in a stillage—in transit to a new location in the University of Technology Sydney.
With Movement Reconstructions Baker Smith reveals the gentle acts of care and (often invisible) labour involved in making and maintaining a sculpture. Even one such as Growth Forms, which at first glance is characterised by its weight and durability.
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This project has been supported by the City of Sydney’s Cultural and Creative Grants and UNSW Art & Design.
Installation view, She Speaks in Sculpture, UTS Gallery, Sydney, 2022. Photo: Zan Wimberley.