Tipping Point

About

Tipping Point

the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place. Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Murray and Burgess deploy a pared-down visual language and simple recycled materials to convey meaning. In this work they suspend a cluster of simple rectilinear and mute pieces of wood together to create a thick swarm of yellow vertical lines which shout their presence. 

The yellow is important - it has become a signature colour for the artist duo. Adopted from the Hi-Viz yellow of workmen’s jackets, the colour alerts the viewer to pay attention and signals a warning - a warning about climate change. 

The jagged suspended arrangement is random and chaotic, the purlins no longer function as structure and support. Some of the wood is toppling, in a state of unbalance. The vertical, long a symbol of civilisation, of upright man, spires, centre posts and masts, tips to the diagonal indicating that something is wrong. The spaces between are compressed and threatening, the scratched and knocked materiality of wood conferred to the air around them. A temporal space has been opened up, a stalling in time, as if we are waiting for a decision to be made or an action to take place.

Bio

Since ex-architects Ro Murray and Mandy Burgess started working together in 2015 the collaborative practice of Murray and Burgess has concerned itself with environmental and social issues. Homesweethome (2016 and 2018), The Waiting Room(2017) and Passages (2017) concerned the appalling treatment of asylum seekers in off-shore detention; Fortress (2019), En garde (2019) and now Tipping Point address climate change.