a small metal pin, a piece of rubber, a section of metal pipe with securing nut Melissa Laing

Melissa Laing takes the civil aviation industry as a topical example of modern society’s desperate pursuit for safety assurance. Her installation explores the products of this industry, which harness the generative power of paranoia; proliferating safety checklists, procedures, policies, maintenance schedules, wildlife abatement and incidence reporting. The title Laing has used for her show lists the variety of foreign objects found and recorded through runway inspections in Australia: a small metal pin, a piece of rubber, a section of metal pipe with securing nut, two red engine plugs and red ribbon, a reverse thruster hatch stopper bush, some down strapping, a signal horn, a piece of brake lining, a screwdriver, a broken omni-directional threshold light, multiple bird, bat and turtle carcasses, a plastic water bottle, a block of wood, a beer can and a piece of paper.

Laing’s attention has narrowed in on the industry’s Rossetta Stone - the black box, audio and flight data recorders, which act as focal points for our morbid curiosity with disasters and our belief that they can be avoided. In a lab-like setting she presents the physical repercussions of this belief: smashed up black boxes alongside the animal life that has fallen victim to these technologies and anxieties.

Click to download the exhibition text (PDF)

Presented alongside Roger Boyce and Marie Claire Brehaut Nature Morte and Joseph Worley Bewildering Scheme, exhibitions which spiral around our morbid fascination with death, depravity, disorientation, disaster, doubt, danger and destruction.