Unique exhibition launched at Wollongong City Gallery
18-Oct-2002

Above: Associate Professor Gerry Turcotte, John Mundy, Canadian Consul General, Leanne Mundy and Jean Labrie, Head, Canadian Studies Section, International Academic Relations, Department of Foreign Affairs, Canada, pictured at the launch.

A collection of photographs and a book of poetry penned by local writer and University of Wollongong lecturer Associate Professor Gerry Turcotte was recently launched at the Wollongong City Gallery.

The unique exhibition titled Border Crossings explores the theme of reconstruction and deconstruction through photographs and texts that centre on buildings and places in growth and decay.

It includes passages from Professor Turcotte’s first novel Flying in Silence, shortlisted as The Melbourne Age’s Book of the Year, as well as his poetry collections Neighbourhood of Memory and Winterlude.

A fusion of the photographic and the poetic, Border Crossings is a meditation on the idea of borders as frames, and of renovation as a language for change, migration and escape.

To achieve this many of the works have been allowed to cross over and contaminate each other. Similarly, some of the images were allowed to "infect" the poems, altering the text so that both image and word entered into a different dialogue.

"The exhibition is a meeting place of different landscapes and memories – it is both representative of the written works, but also beyond them. In this way, then, the exhibition contains poems that do not appear in any of the books, but also some that are subtly changes from their printed form, because every new frame – every context – alters the story," Professor Turcotte said.

The books and images are haunted by each other. And as in any relationship, the point of contact generates a different text, a scar that leaves its mark, that gestures towards another destination – a border crossing, in both the strictest, and loosest, sense.

Professor Turcotte’s latest collection of poetry Winterlude was launched by Canadian Consul General, John Mundy, following the official launch of Border Crossings by Dean of Arts, Professor Sharon Bell.