A Portal Above Chinatown: The Sky Continues Beneath our Feet by Michaela Gleave.

Just under our noses, or actually above our beloved Chinese Noodle House, in the middle of Sydney’s Chinatown is Passage, a 24/7 art gallery dedicated to installation art. For their latest exhibition, the gallery commissioned internationally acclaimed Australian artist Michaela Gleave to present ‘The sky continues beneath our feet’—a ‘portal’ communicating the mysteries of the cosmos. The installation is a constructed universe that glows 24/7, defying the time and space of the outside world.

With a focus on the nature of reality and our innate relationship to time, matter and space, the artwork speaks to the artist’s greater practice. As she elaborates in her recent monograph: “I’m still seeking moments where I can find a schism in reality and explode that stable worldview to access other possibilities”.

Michaela divided Passage into two parts, concealing 80% of the space with a polycarbonate stud wall, while the 20% component remains visible. Behind the wall is Michaela’s universe: glitter, inflated star balloons, and foam coexist in a paradoxical state—shiny and spongy, granular and continuous, opaque and transparent, reflective and matte, absorbent and repellent, fragile yet durable.

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The timber studded and polycarbonate wall creates a hazy 2D grid, representing our limited sense of dimensionality and standing at odds with the rest of the space. Light filters through the wall as we peer through lenticular distortions in an attempt to glimpse, pause, rethink, and shift our assumptions on reality.

“The sky continues beneath our feet by Michaela Gleave is a constellation of ideas, a material collection of a practice blazing with cosmic ambition, like the tail of a comet the artist has carted around with her,” elaborates Passage Co-Director, Marco Rinaldi. “It is a constructed universe of party materials, air, light, timber, and reflections standing on a precipice between real and not real. Here, truth and fictions exist at a point in time where humanity seems to no longer believe in physical reality and is busy dissolving the world around us,” he concludes.

On now till September 17th, make sure to stop by—at any hour—if you’re in the neighbourhood. For more information, click here.

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[Images courtesy of Passage Gallery. Photography by Document Photography.]