The moon
2008
Medium
hessian, felt, modelling clay, glitter, cardboard, found object
Measurements
750.0 × 125.0 cm (banner) 30.0 cm diameter (spheres) (each)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Robert Nudds and Michaela Webb through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2016
Gallery location
Gallery 9
Level 2, NGV Australia
About this work
Mikala Dwyer’s works draw our attention to the unseen – to invisible materials and hidden histories. She explores our relationship with magic, memory, sexuality and ritual. The moon pays homage to Giovanni Riccioli, the seventeenth-century Jesuit astronomer who extensively studied the moon and was responsible for some of its earliest mapping. His terminology for its topographic landmarks, Dwyer notes, is endowed with ‘human poetics and emotions’. Each phrase in this poetic rollcall refers to a geographic feature of the moon – Seething Bay, Bay of Love, Bay of Roughness – while the five spheres form a planetary constellation on the floor.