Messages in the Sky contains recent and new artworks reusing redundant aircraft to create pieces from helicopter panels repurposed as kites. The large scale installations have been made from the wings of discarded Cirrus, Beechcraft Duchess, Beechcraft Twin Bonanza, Piper and Cirrus aircraft.
The exhibition includes a new collaborative artwork, Wanderlust terra Firma, made with Mid-Western Regional Council Youth Services. The artwork uses salvaged Cirrus aircraft wings with the appropriate registration of ‘VH-WTF’ and comprises a découpage from vintage National Geographic magazines kindly donated by members of the local community.
The exhibition also contains video projections including a new work Team Spirit with footage taken earlier this year at the Shirone Giant Kite Festival during a residency at Yui-Port Niigita, Japan. The 300 year-old festival features enormous, intricately decorated kites up to 12 metres in length known as ‘odako’. Teams of kite flyers gather at the festival to compete in kite battles where the object is to entangle the strings of rival kites, bringing them down to a dramatic tug-of-war finale.
