S 37° 47` 46.01",
E 144° 57` 32.779"

A point of view video shot on an iPhone of walking feet; exploring nooks, shadows and overlooked spaces and objects down Tin Alley. Images are intercut and overlaid, and an animated sprial unfurls over the brick path. The video is then reversed, showing backwards walking and ending with a long shot of the shadow of a tree.

Fiona Martin,

Tin Alley, Don a Brilliant Mercurial Skin

Video, 3:46

Tin Alley is an unglamourous, austere entry into the university. It may be considered a portal. As I traverse Tin Alley, I transmogrify from an ordinary person into extraordinary student; an aura of possibility flaring beyond my physical edges. Tin Alley herself, observes and smiles upon these ‘becomings’, even if the pedestrian fails to observe the many machinations of the minutiae of the alley. In my hurry to enter the university, I speed past the small dead bird whose life was lived, short and content in this place, whose song I had heard but didn’t notice until revisiting this moment. My lofty head didn’t see the two jumping spiders vying for a mate with an intricate dance, mere centimetres from my footsteps. I forgot to appreciate the pleasing and self-effacing lines of the architecture. After deciding to drift along again down Tin Alley, I began to notice. This work invites the viewer to consider noticing as opposed to rushing by when time no longer really rushes as it once did.

Fiona Martin is an artist, teacher, hypnotherapist, dance therapist, fitness instructor, poet, and theatre maker. Martin makes artwork using the mediums of video, soundscape, performance, and installation. Her work, fecundated by historic and modern feminist thought, investigates consciousness, rights to leisure and self-actualisation, and the frisson of liminal spaces as a realm of fundamental growth and learning. Martin is a recent graduate of the VCA Faculty of Fine Art and Music, GCVA (Visual Art) and will launch into a Masters of Contemporary Art at the VCA in 2021. She has recently received a mentorship through the George Paton Gallery where she held her first solo exhibition in 2020. Martin was also a 2019 awardee of the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Miegunyah Student Project Award. Martin utilises her eclectic experiential knowledge to create works which seek to underscore universal truths.