Gemma Smith – Boulder #2, (4 rotational viewpoints), 2008, acrylic plastic, 94cm x 64cm x 80cm. Purchased 2019.

The first time I visited Murdoch University’s Art Gallery, I saw Gemma Smith’s abstract sculpture titled Boulder #2 standing in the centre of the gallery space. I was on my lunch break, in the first week of my new job and eager to explore the campus. I was the only person in the art gallery at the time, so I had the pleasure of a private viewing. I curiously walked up to the sculpture and started to walk around it slowly. With one rotation completed, I walked around it again. Then again, just to be sure.

Boulder #2 commanded the gallery space. Its acrylic cliff-like facets jettison upward in screaming bright colours, connecting at irregular junctions. In a vivid palette of green and pink, red and royal blue, these acrylic panels are slightly transparent, and when the colours layer over one another, new hues are created. If you look close enough, you will see your reflection looking back at you in monochrome. The sculpture’s translucency differs every time it’s viewed, depending on where the viewer stands in the gallery, where the sculpture is placed, the time of day and which panel the light catches. It is still but everchanging. Boulder #2 is a perpetual exercise in perspective.

To a certain extent, Murdoch University’s community partakes in the same exercise of perspective.

The land this campus sits on has been a place of learning and coming together for as long as people have been coming together and learning, with the University making up only fifty years out of over 60,000. In such a short time, hundreds of thousands of people have worked, learnt and researched here, every one of us already complex and kaleidoscopic in their experience. Over each person’s time in this place, we colour each other's perspective, adding layers and depth and vibrancy. No matter how fleeting, no matter where on campus we frequent, we leave Murdoch University as different people than we arrived as. We shape the perspectives of others, and they in turn, shape us.

Perhaps one of the strongest parallels between Boulder #2 and Murdoch University is that with each added colour panel, with each person who joins this community, our complexity grows and is welcomed into the fold. There is always room for new hues, new connections, new intersections. A deeper and more robust experience is the legacy that each of us leave, handing over the rich, electric colours over to people who will interact with them in a completely new way.

This place is still but ever changing. At this perspective point, the 50th Anniversary, it is just as important to look forward as it is to look back. The perspectives of the past 50 years have created a bright foundation, multi-faceted and transformative. Every person who passes through Murdoch University will gain new perspectives with each lap of campus, just as viewers of Boulder #2 do, with each step around this enigmatic sculpture.

About Em Readman

Em Readman is an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Project Coordinator at Murdoch University, and also a freelance writer and ceramicist. They are dedicated to improving outcomes and elevating the experiences of LGBTIQA+ staff, students, and community members at Murdoch, as well as centring lived experience and voices in every projects.