SALLY TAPE

Sally Tape is an artist who investigates ideas of links between architecture, minimalism and movement. Tape's primary focus examines how this three-way relationship redefines the idea of contemporary modernism and the non-objective image, making their work less about form and shape, and more about movement and the physical experience of space.

The Flow Through Space: Unravelling the Art of Sally Tape

by Marieke Folkers, SEA Foundation 2019

Imagine what you see when looking out of a car window on a highway or when scrolling through a social media feed. The landscape and separate pictures become an abstracted image, consisting of patterns. This principle, related to the tension between architecture and movement, is central to the work of Australian artist Sally Tape. Tape’s drawings and paintings revolve around layering, both in a literal and metaphorical sense. She builds up a piece with different layers over each other, using cutouts to define the figures. The works are a visualisation of structural layers in architecture.

During her residency at SEA Foundation Sally Tape developed her artistic practice in search of new challenges and techniques. In the exhibition a transition in her practice becomes apparent. The works Architecture and Movement One and Architecture and Movement Two are highly designed compositions, their technique polished with no visible brushstrokes. The later Layered Space and Swipe - Spatial Configuration of Architecture show a new way of working; more loose and rough, ad hoc and with visible marks. Presenting Wall 1 Study of Architecture and Movement and Wall 2 Study of Architecture and Movement as enlarged prints is a new presentation method, and the use of a blue background for a selection from the same series contrasts with framed pairs on a white wall, changing how colours and forms are perceived.

Space, movement and time

The relation between space, movement and time is crucial when looking at Tape’s work. These elements come together in the perception of architecture, which is a main motif in Tape’s oeuvre. The idea that architecture “can create slow and fast spaces” inspires her. Aesthetically she relates to modernist architecture: repetition, ease and comfort appeal to her, and these formal aspects are reflected in her compositions and use of colour. Tape portrays, in her own words, “the flow through space.” She does so by playing with perspective within the boundaries of paper or canvas, shaping the paper around corners and integrating the edges of a canvas to encourage the viewer to move along the works.

Movement occurs on two levels: within the image and in the presence of the body in the gallery space. The images are, as Tape explains, the result of “the body as a vehicle for movement.” She cites Shaun Gladwell’s film Yokohama Linework (2005) — a skateboarder moving through a city with the camera directed downwards — as an example of how the passing street becomes abstracted. This inspired Tape to explore how an image can visualise passing cityscapes. The works are not representations of motion but visualisations of what a moving body sees, creating a tension where viewers both slow down to observe and move around to inspect from multiple angles.

While engaging in these motions in space, Tape also reviews the notion of time. She simultaneously tries to grasp and expand a moment. Her paintings and drawings depict the impression of a momentary experience while elongating this impression. She references Daniel Crooks, who slices and repeats film frames so that time is extended. This layering delays the viewing process and creates a paradox between quick motion and contemplative stillness.

Visualisation of modernity

Tape’s visualisation of structural layers in architecture can be illuminated by Paul Virilio’s concept of ‘eyeballing’ — a rapid visual assessment under high speed — which fragments and abstracts vision. Virilio’s ‘transapparent horizon’ (a flattening of depth due to speed) resonates in Tape’s work, where depth is suggested but space is also flattened. He extends this to screen culture: the fast flow of images transmitted by screens produces a similar accelerated perception.

The transapparent horizon shifts the role of the body in visual perception. In high-speed situations the body moves rapidly; when sitting and scrolling, the person is virtually present but physically passive. This links to the figure of the flâneur described by Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire — a strolling observer of modernity, seeking “the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent.” Tape materialises this contemporary relation to environment and modern representations of landscapes (both urban and virtual), perhaps creating a new kind of flâneur who observes a rapid stream of images that becomes abstract and compressed in time and space.

Bibliography