For that which is between the earth, rather than being a traditionally curated show as such, is an ongoing collaborative research between an artist and a curator. After a year-long conversation, the two reached the starting point of the project -or one of the many possible-, which started taking its shape with the first exhibition at Gaffa in May 2015. In For that which is between the earth, Moldvaer and Tresca, using Sydney as a starting point, attempted to investigate what constitutes a meeting with an unknown place, the experience of finding oneself foreign in an unfamiliar environment, and finally how we can understand and speak of intangible presences, like memories, fictions, imagined cities and places that we’ve never been to, but that are as present and vivid as manifest realities. The exhibition examines the abstraction of language, the need for home, the concept of pilgrimage and the nature of knowledge. These rather vast subjects are not exhausted in any academic sense, there is no abstract explaining the essence of the project, nor will there be any fixed conclusion. Such broad overarching themes have sprung more as a necessity to try to understand and grasp Sydney from afar, rather than being focal points of observation. Even though the project is structurally site-specific, it has come to be an inquiry into places in general: how we meet, experience, and interpret environments that are unknown to us, and furthermore, how we can speak of these places and these encounters, taking into account all our limitations and the fallacy of our interpretative systems.

Luisa Tresca

GAFFA