Crux (as seen from those who sleep on the surface of the earth under the night sky)

Canadian artist Brian Jungen often creates sculpture by modifying and combining existing goods so that the viewer moves back and forth between the original identity and function of those materials and the new role they perform in his sculpture. His startling and insightful works connect the social and environmental effects of globalised trade in mass-produced objects to the status and power of diversion that these selectively transmit.

For the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008), Jungen suspended a mobile from an existing structure in the Industrial Precinct of Cockatoo Island. The mobile’s sculptural forms are created from hard suitcases, through which Jungen references the experience of travel, long journeys, and feelings of frustration and liberation resulting from lost baggage incidents with airlines. Jungen’s evocation of unclaimed baggage and lost identities expresses the artist’s interest in this separation of material and being.