The plastic frontier - the navigation and fabrication of identity and heritage through surfing, kitsch, ritual, myth making and semiotics

Abstract

Enter the fantastic plastic sacred realm, a seductive, buoyant and subversive devotional space surrounded by mythological creatures, forms and images; a cultural shrine loaded with a bounty of recontextualised symbolic incarnations. Ritual objects, and the identity markers of surfing, suburbia and colonial impressions, are harmoniously arranged in an immersive diorama, highlighting the mercurial nature of Australian identity. Urban sprawlers frolic at the threshold where land meets sea and embrace a liminal terrain full of potential for fresh renderings of heritage and history. Imperialistic notions of a youthful nation full of potential manifest themselves in images of fun in the sun while concrete aborigines defiantly stand guard on the lawns of suburban homes. Such forms of iconography or Australiana and their contemporary variants or counterpoints are ripe for glazing with postmodern irony; with new value to be found in their genesis. Experience the manifestation of desires projected through the lens of rose coloured shades onto the culturally mutable landscape of terra incognita. As the understood birthplace of surfing, Hawaii and the islands of the Pacific rim, provide surfers with a deep sense of heritage, history and tradition. This combined with Australia s close geographical proximity and island status afford us perhaps some form of cultural cohesion. Artifacts and motifs have been transplanted and commodified to suit Western impressions of the exotic other and absorbed into surfing s visual language. The identity constructing forms of surf culture are continually mutating and transforming through social, commercial and environmental influences. The symbolic tokens of a surfing life are now served up on the smorgasbord of styles for identity shoppers the world over. Within The Plastic Frontier kitsch objects, and patterns from the suburbs collide with ritual devices and patterns of surf culture, resulting in a hybridised conception of cultural identity. Thematically pertinent materials and processes provide meaning and context through aesthetic, physical and conceptual means. Strands of metaphor become interlaced creating junctures and points of overlap that allow the cultivation of layered and multi faceted meanings.