“Monuments of fiction”
Sean Rafferty
25 Jan → 16 Feb 2013
Gallery 2

A nature scene shown with the caption 'I didn't know about these ruins until Grandad started talking about his dreams,'.

Next to the house of Sean Rafferty’s late grandparents in Ireland was a collection of stones that had been taken from the site of a nearby ruin. The stones were once part of a mansion called Rockingham House that was destroyed by fire in 1957.

The assemblage, made into chair, represented the only artistic gesture that Rafferty knew his grandfather had made on the farm. They were a composition of significant historical fragments into a new form. In the spirit of his grandfather’s gesture Rafferty has taken fragments collected from the farm (in the form of objects, photographs, video and ‘archival’ documents) prior to its sale to arrange as a composition. It tells the story of the farm’s landscape as a locus of mythology and other grand fictions.

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'Axis and Alignment' in bold capital white text on a black background.
Film still of a man standing in nature looking out towards a body of water. A caption states 'Photos of Grandad later in his life show him standing and looking out over his land'.
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Sean Rafferty is an artist in Naarm/Melbourne.