Minka Gillian’s Mind Garden

Cable Management as Art

CX reader Graham Parsons contacted us last month to tell us about an interesting exhibition he’d just seen at Incinerator Art Space in Willoughby, NSW. Artist Minka Gillian had taken over the space with her Mind Garden exhibition, an ‘immersive installation of contemporary sculpture’.
What caught Graham’s eye was Minka’s extensive use of the tools of the AV trade as materials; USB, HDMI and RCA cabling, jacks, and cable ties. We contacted Minka to find out what had drawn her to these materials, and what their use meant to her.

“I have always been a bower bird, attracted to colour and texture,” said Minka. “I like to use materials around me partially as a challenge to make the ‘mundane’ beautiful and partly because I hate waste.

“My sculptures have always been biomorphic shapes that allude to nature and the body but when I discovered I needed a Pacemaker at age 36, my materials took on a new meaning.”

“Electrical wire, leads, electrodes, plugs, and adapters all came to represent my electrical heart problem and Pacemaker. I use weaving techniques to create my sculptures, cable ties to replace stitching and cords to replace more traditional threads.

“I love these materials for their ease of use and colours, but I am oblivious to their original uses. There is nothing more disturbing than a box full of tangled cables so through my creations I enjoy making order from the chaos!”

“In the Mind Garden exhibition, my sculptures are hand-woven structures that transform everyday prosaic materials into biomorphic objects of beauty and intrigue.

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“Through the process of making I am sometimes guided by the materials as if they have their own life and will. The final sculptures are rarely how I planned them but much more complicated than I could initially visualise.

“I reference nature and human anatomy in a broad sense but also try to imbue my sculptures with my own personal stories of my life.”

Through the process of making I am sometimes guided by the materials as if they have their own life and will

Maybe those of you with boxes full of old cables, power supplies, and adapters might take up the challenge to create your own cable management art. If you’d like to get in touch with Minka and purchase one of her excellent AV sculptures for your office, you can contact her at:

www.minkagillian.com
minkagillian@iinet.net.au

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NEWS from CX Magazine – October 2020   

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