Megan Geckler: A Million Things That Make Your Head Spin

Overview

If you've been worrying that beautiful blue skies would mean the end of rainbows over the summer, think again. American artist Megan Geckler's current installation in the atrium at Customs House will make you feel like you're inside a real-life rainbow (minus the pot of gold at the end).

Geckler creates her art using thousands of metres of hyper-colourful, translucent flagging tape — the kind you'd normally see used by surveyors on construction sites – and a highly mathematical technique that essentially produces "drawings in space". Her installation in the atrium hovers from the ceiling — add sunlight, look up at the ceiling and the result is spectacular.

It's named A Million Things That Make Your Head Spin after a line from Brisbane-based band The Jungle Giants' song 'Don't Know What Else to Do', but this head-spinning effect equally refers to the combination of our sensory systems and physics that makes her artwork appear kinetic when the viewers' perspective changes. The current installation provides plenty of opportunities for this — it can be viewed from different entrances that shape the focal point of the artwork or from the different levels of the atrium.

The installation is part of the City of Sydney's Art & About, an ongoing program of temporary artwork throughout the city.

Images: Jessica Lindsay and William Short.