Plato’s cave at the Earl

Plato’s cave at the Earl operated as an installation by day and the Tasmanian International Arts/10 days on the Island festival fringe lounge by night with over 600 visitors. Plato’s cave at the Earl transformed the Earl arts centre foyer into an immersive lounge environment, using painted works on paper glued on all walls and the ceiling and hand printed furniture, a video projection and soundscape.Plato’s cave at the Earl engages with ideas from philosophy, traditions of landscape representation in Western art, architecture and the decorative use of natural motifs in wallpaper and furnishings, installation art, video and sound art and extends the performative potentials of painting in the setting of a theatre foyer. The landscape beyond is negotiated in ink paintings where marks and surfaces reference geological structures and rock surfaces emphasizing the tactility, illusory 3d surfaces and colour variations. A video of a fire projected onto an implied rock surface painting implicated participants sitting on printed bar stools into the artwork and a soundscape provided a multi-sensorial experience. Plato’s cave at the Earl demonstrated the value of the visual arts in addressing hybrid forms of painting which utilize interdisciplinary approaches. The project aimed to create new ways of negotiating spaces by expanding the experience of a particular place through stimulating different modes of engagement, of the actual place and through reference to spaces and histories beyond.