Serene Thain
Polystyrene, plaster, cement board, timber
Miniaturism is an attitude associated with the discrepancy
between human and model scales. A Planner's Nightmare
takes its audience on an exploration of real and imaginary worlds,
inducting the viewer into the tiny world of the 'Gulliver gap'*. It
does not attempt to emulate an urban city or even a utopian one but
rather hints at one that may never come true. The reduction in
scale that goes with being miniature skews the time and space
relation of our everyday life, creating other time; a type of
transcendence which contradicts our existing reality and encourages
infinite daydreaming. In distant miniature, different things merge
and allow us to dream and to manipulate; when at the top of the
mountain, a man sees the whole world in miniature and when he is
high, he is great.
* A term originally coined by J M Anderson which refers to
the 'toy town' syndrome the awareness of our own physical
size in relation to that of a scale house.
Serene Thain was born in 1960 in Singapore. She worked as an
architectural draughtsperson before migrating to Auckland where she
worked as a model-maker. She graduated from AUT University with a
Bachelor of Visual Arts (2004).
Serene is an installation artist whose interest is the material
nature of objects in the everyday environment. In many of her
installations these objects acquire a different identity and are
transformed or liberated from their functional role.
Following from her work as a model-maker, Thain uses
miniaturisation as a tool of investigation: the world of miniature
allows us a sense of authority, is more approachable, more easily
perceived and understood. It also creates a moment of intimacy and
a sense of privacy and of closeness is inherent.
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