Slow Decline by Dayne Trower

Dayne Trower’s new exhibition, Slow Decline, opens on 29 November at Melbourne’s fortyfivedownstairs.

Trower’s small-scale sculptures use the geometry of construction to map accurate plans of intersections from Melbourne’s city and suburban areas. Trower marries the memory of the modular cityscape with what lies below it: a natural time capsule of historic changes in the earth’s surface. In these works, all skyward manifestations dissolve as the urban infrastructure is severed at ground level, making what remains the freshest stage of geological strata.

In the process of shrinking and levelling, the monumental is miniaturized. What on first glance is the model of a building, on closer observation is the fossilized blueprint of many. The city is captured as the final thought on our planet’s surface: maps of the way architects and planners have constructed the present.