Sydney artists Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro make site-specific and daring installations which often explore the idea of the home and permanency. For their project in the gallery’s Level 2 contemporary project space the artists use a Ger, a Mongolian tent, filled with archive boxes, and a trailer stacked with mirrored Perspex and wooden sculptures. 

The Mongol Empire was the largest continuous empire in the world and it grew from a nomadic roaming culture – epitomised by the Ger as an impermanent mobile home – to a powerful global economy. To achieve maximum circulation they relied heavily on paper to disseminate information.

As the artists’ write: … in essence the Mongolians were the first truly global people.  After their initial destruction and conquest of cities, the Mongols instituted systems that served to create networks of commerce and communication that spanned continents. They created a global order that was based upon free trade, a reliable postal system, religious freedom, a single international law, a universal alphabet and a paper currency that was to be used everywhere’

The paper trail not only references the different ways paper can represent the distribution of knowledge in past and present cultures, it also explores the link between bureaucracies now and then and the evolution of culture: Is there a difference between nomadism and what we now understand as contemporary globalisation?

In previous work Healy and Cordeiro stacked the remains of a demolished house into the shape of a large rectangle and they have wrapped up with string the stuff leftover in an artists’ studio complex to make a huge ball.

Exhibition supported by Australia Council

Level 2 AGNSW Contemporary Projects are supported by Andrew Cameron