Where Measurement Ends

This exhibition responds to an eccentric measuring device (called The Evolver) that I constructed and set up on the streets of Sydney in the hope of measuring the world I am in.

The machine, which I have provided with pens, looks like it is measuring something... but I don’t know what. I interpret these drawing measurements by drawing or writing into the ink recordings it has made to navigate to a point of resolution – to arrive at some insight into the world I live in. The space between what can be measured and that which resists measurement.

It is insight I crave. I want to know my world in a way that my conscious can’t know – a state before we ate from the tree of knowledge. These drawings (which I call Measurement.Assisted.Drawings [M.A.D]) – are collaborations between myself, The Scientist and this recording / measuring device that I constructed. The drawings and measurements pick up the state between order and disorder and question how all the wildly different planetary systems are held together. Other pieces in the show, like the mechanical works allude to this precariousness of trying to measure it.

Artist Statement – Steven Durbach

I am an artist with a background in the science of genetics. The ideas of science; it’s processes, aesthetic and philosophy, impact and underpin my work which sits at the interfaith of art and science. Becoming an artist gave me a renewed perspective on what science was. The beauty of it as well as its complex narrative structure.

My approach has brought me to working with scientists and different scientific institutions and I have presented my works and approach at UNSW, Boston Uni, ISEA2024 as well as The Science Gallery in Melbourne, where I talked of / showed my art as if it was science. I have held several solo exhibitions including a collaborative show with UNSW’s Silicon Quantum Computing and have had the opportunity to develop ideas / approaches through residencies with Waverly’s Bondi Pavillion Creative collaborations.

I principally arrive at my insights through drawing but also incorporate a performative approach, where I work as a street artist in my character as ‘The Scientist’ to ask questions – to engage the public and inform my work exploring the ideas around science and what it means to measure. This work has been extended through the support of Poetry Sydney and most recently in collaboration with gaffa and Poetry Sydney’s Future Movement Project.