Gary Deirmendjian, Presence, 2016, duration 32 mins, looped
Commissioned by Transport for NSW Screening times: 6am-3pm on odd-numbered days throughout February, 3pm-12am on even-numbered days throughout February
“Once a believer I now rest my faith in uncertainty. There’s been a lifelong personal struggle towards a firming appreciation of our oneness as a single species, and of our extreme smallness in the context of a humming, vast and indifferent universe. The understanding that ours is a momentary existence on a speck of dust adrift in boundless space has gained considerable density.
“The tension between the felt sublime of this base truth and the many ways in which we are ushered away from knowing it fully, is somehow what has managed to surge the expression in all its forms.
“The core interest lies in the tidal mechanisms of social conditioning and one’s place in the given oceans of unquestioned attitudes and mass acceptance.
“The expression in turn continues to find inspiration in the ever enduring and conquering individual, of any time and place, who has struggled through and come to see beyond the assumed certainties.
“In both intent and purpose, presence is deeply rooted in this very arrival.
“Suggesting itself as another realm (unearthly even) with inhabitants at once familiar yet foreign, presence lies as a silent counterweight to the rush and daily life of Wynyard, its terrain appearing to stretch deep into the fog, well beyond the curved glazing: the monumental bay window that separates us.
“Their unthreatened and non-threatening focus is us and our way of being it seems.
“Let it take the viewer’s fancy, should they allow it to.’ – Gary Deirmendjian
