From Adelaide With Love

Sawtooth Gallery, Launceston
October 2018

Allen + Julie

1000 years

7.7.17

Christina Peek is a South Australian artist whose practice explores how we manifest our ideas of romance through sincere yet futile gestures. The Adelaide University footbridge has in recent years become a place '...for kissing'.[1]Lovers fasten inscribed padlocks onto the sides of the bridge to signify their devotion to one another and throw the key into the river below. 

As this phenomenon grew in popularity the local council began to fear for the structural integrity of the bridge. Concerned it would not be able to support the extra weight of the locks, they began to discourage lovers, threatening to cut them off. 

As I took rubbings of the locks, preserving ghosts of the engravings, I wondered if this was enough to keep the couples together if the lock was later removed. Similarly, through the process of rubbing, I recorded names and dates, which had been covered over with permanent marker, hacked at or disfigured at the hands of bolt cutters. I recorded countless anniversaries, marriages and pledges of love. All of these disjointed narratives say, for better or for worse, we were here and I loved you. 

[1]Father explains to his daughter the significance of the Adelaide University footbridge and why there are locks fastened to the bridge. Overheard while on the bridge rubbing locks for this project.