Any Colour
You Like
Birsbane-based sculptor Ross Manning’s monumental kinetic sculpture Melody Lines is all refracted rainbows - a little reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s iconic 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon. Installed within the cavernous foyer of Sydney’s industrial style art precinct, Carriageworks in late 2016, the largescale installation bended the boundaries of the site’s original architecture, offering up a new light and a new perspective. Suspended from the ceiling, Melody Lines is made up of an intricate system of conveyor tracks similar to those used in assembly lines and other industrial manufacture - touching upon Carriageworks’ industrial past. Described as ‘an expression of moving colour in space’, the overhead conveyor weaves and zig-zags through the air above, ferrying numerous transparent pendants, which create an ever-shifting array of coloured light and shadows. The piece occupies the viewers peripheral vision, using optical flashpoints. For the time Manning’s installtion inhabited Carriageworks, its industrial interior was transformed into a dreamlike landscape, animated into a perpetual state of motion and flux. Through colour, movement and light Melody Lines begs us to bask in its radiance, but also to reconsider our surroundings, and the underlying architecture. Or, as Roger Waters put it, ‘Everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.’