Emma Hamilton: By Way of Navigation

Overview

When you find yourself on a small island in Norway, you start contemplating how humans make sense of their place in the world. We haven't been there and done that, but we're not just making assumptions. Melbourne-based artist Emma Hamilton spent part of 2015 and 2016 on Sørværet in the Scandinavian country, conjuring up By Way of Navigation based on her stints there.

Hamilton's exhibition is interested in one key line of thinking: the difference between how we actually interact with the landscape around us and the methods we use to turn what we can see, touch and experience into maps, photos and navigational calculations. Capturing the Norwegian terrain, her mix of images and sculptures attempt to blend and probe the two, and merge visual and scientific observation.

If the end result gets your brain pondering the wide world around us, then it has done its job. Get lost in thought at By Way of Navigation from March 22 to April 8 at Metro Arts.

Image: Emma Hamilton, The distortion of landscape by the camera, 2016, digital collage.