Maxim Olsen-Wilken

Artwork 1:
Final piece 1 explores relationship with place, by commentating on the perspectives of people connected with the land, and the contrast of such people to those who see a landscape without significance. Exploring texture, line, pattern and colour, it depicts an accurate topographic map of Eltham, my home suburb, and registers places of personal significance and their interconnections within this contextual setting. I focused on showing unfamiliarity and a sense of danger within the unknown in my colour palette and textural choices. It was through this that I explored psychogeography and interconnected relationships, combined with perspectives of individuals in viewing or experiencing the land. The material of wood paired with the laser-cutting process also helped establish a sterile, indifferent aesthetic. I feel like this work effectively communicates and relates to my initial aim of portraying a landscape “in an abstract lens”, and does so while considering personal experience (this being either extensive or no connection to location), another idea brainstormed in my exploration proposal. The piece also displays my own progression and development from these initial ideas into new ideas like projection of place through data, indicating the refining and polishing of the ideas I went through, to enhance and present my initial ideas of conveying connection to place in abstracted fashion more proficiently.

Artwork 2:
Central Business District explores Melbourne’s CBD in a multi-lateral, layered approach, focusing on interpretation of place through the ambiguous depiction of the location with data. The work displays the mapping of the tallest building on 50 individual Melbourne CBD blocks. These have been converted from heights to scaled diameter circles, deliberately creating confusion and encourages the interaction and development of multiple opinions within audiences, through development of opinions on possible meanings of the artwork and what it may be. The 3-dimensional, five-part layering of the artwork again encourages viewing what is displayed from multiple perspectives.