Zero Project

I speak to Tina, who is busy stripping leaves from lengths of Phragmites Australis, the common reed. Now that I know what they are, I see just how common they are, upright and swaying in the cool westerly wind gusting at the foot of the Tamar River. A few reeds hang from string and click away like knitting needles. Something she prepared earlier.
Tina is working on the Zero Project, an art installation named for its level of funding. Using local and recycled materials, the project is settling into King's Park. Spirals of pinebark decorate the grass; there are driftwood structures at the water's edge.

We discuss the lay of the land. You can barely see the installation until you are right on top of it. This is particularly true of the spirals, which titillate your eyes; there is a strange tension in only ever acquiring suggestions of the whole.

It is amusing, walking from the park, to see the pinebark piles surrounding young trees by the edge of the road. Are they part of the installation, or its inspiration? At the very least, they provide another series of the 'zeros' that are springing up mockingly in the park.

Frustrated funding need not always hold up the determined. Tina continues stripping the reeds. It will be a long night with soldering iron and string.