'The sky continues beneath our feet' by Michaela Gleave

Passage is thrilled to present our latest commission by internationally renowned artist Michaela Gleave ‘The sky continues beneath our feet’, a ‘portal’ communicating the mysteries of the cosmos.

The exhibition is Passage’s 5th commission, showcasing a constructed universe that glows 24/7, defying the time and space of the outside world. 

In The sky continues beneath our feet, Gleave divides Passage into two parts, concealing 80% of the space with a polycarbonate stud wall, while 20% of the space remains visible. Behind the wall is Gleave’s universe: glitter, inflated star balloons, and foam coexist in a paradoxical state – shiny and spongey, granular and continuous, opaque and transparent, reflective and matte, absorbent and repellent, fragile yet durable.

Gleave’s timber studded and polycarbonate wall creates a hazy 2D grid, a representation of our limited sense of dimensionality, dissecting the horizontal installation landscape and standing at odds with the rest of the space. Light filters through the wall as we peer through lenticular distortions in an attempt to glimpse, pause, rethink, and shift our assumptions on reality. 

The sky continues beneath our feet by Michaela Gleave is a constellation of ideas, a material collection of a practice blazing with cosmic ambition, like the tail of a comet the artist has carted around with her.

It is a constructed universe of party materials, air, light, timber, and reflections standing on a precipice between real and not real. Here, truth and fictions exist at a point in time where humanity seems to no longer believe in physical reality and is busy dissolving the world around us.  

This project has been assisted by the City of Sydney and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and funding advisory body.