Diana Baker Smith – Falling Towards Another (A Score for the Void)

Falling Towards Another (A Score for the Void) by Gadigal (Sydney)-based artist Diana Baker Smith is the second Judy Wheeler Commission, PICA’s annual series of site-specific works that respond to the history and site of PICA.

For this new commission, Baker Smith has created a graphic score and live performance in response to PICA’s iconic first-floor mezzanine level. The balcony corridor overlooks PICA’s Central Gallery and acts as an internal circulation loop, linking the administrative offices with shared spaces and artist studios.

Illustrated at scale across the vast expanse of PICA’s mezzanine walls, Baker Smith’s score draws on PICA’s historical archive of architectural drawings and photographs of the building. Baker Smith considers the building a historical palimpsest, an accumulation of architectural adaptations that extend from its original construction in 1896 as the Government School to its present-day establishment as a contemporary art space (PICA). Consisting of trailing ellipsis points and lines painted directly onto the walls, Falling Towards Another (A Score for the Void) prompts audiences to consider the particularities of this distinctive space and directs our attention towards its historical layers, architectural interventions and absences and reconfigurations.

For the live performance on Saturday 10 February, Baker Smith has collaborated with Boorloo-based choreographer, Sofie Burgoyne and local dancers Emma Fishwick and Isabella Stone. The title of the work, Falling Towards Another, operates as a movement score for this live performance with the push and pull movement of the two performers held with a single costume made in collaboration with designer Leah Giblin.

The Judy Wheeler Commission is made possible by the generosity of the Simpson Family.