X marks the spot: Traversing the tension between Liminal spaces, The ‘Australian Gothic’, and a permeable reality
X MARKS THE SPOT is a large-scale, multidisciplinary installation that critically engages with the aesthetic and psychological dimensions of the “Australian Gothic”, questioning what that label actually suggests. The work examines the intersections between liminal horror, the uncanny, greed, and the unstable boundaries between reality and fiction. Drawing upon my lived experience of sensorial hallucinations following a series of childhood spinal surgeries, the installation reflects on how altered perception can destabilise the distinction between the real and the imagined, re-exploring the notion of liminal spaces and integrating my psyche as personified liminal terrain.
By invoking the aesthetic and conceptual framework of the American Southern Gothic, this project explores how these notions could be applicable to an Australian context, an underexamined topic within the cultural zeitgeist. This project critically interrogates certain sinister practices embedded within the fabric of this country’s history, illuminating how the spectral residues of a dark colonial history continue to reverberate within the contemporary societal and ecological landscape. In this sense, the project materialises a phenomenological encounter with the unseen, revealing the latent eeriness concealed beneath the surface of a national consciousness.
