DVD, 9min32, Thailand, 2005
Airport Oasis is a body of work that comprises elements of photography, video and performance. The work was made in response to an existing site/ situation at Chiang Mai international airport, February – March 2005.
Two protagonists (the artists) are framed in a lush green space, drinking tea and ‘talking about the future’. They are surrounded by tropical plants and exotic foliage. Their conversation is blocked out by the sound of a nearby waterfall and the whir of fans; an approximation of ‘white noise’ from simulated nature and artificial sources. As conversation is inaudible, their body language in this insulated space is emphasised. An intimate space is created within the ambiguous public/ private space of an airport lounge, where people are constantly coming and going. There is the sense that the two people in the video have sought sanctuary here. This ‘airport oasis’ is a temporary holding space for them to discuss a range of possible places and life trajectories. Once they leave here, they must keep going, just like everybody else.
Airport Oasis is Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy’s (Kennedy Browne’s) first work together and marks the beginning of an exploration into strategies for temporarily occupying and developing meaning out of particular architectural fragments and cultural texts. These spaces are readymade territories and micro environments from which mediated and constructed allusions can be made to ideas of what lies ‘outside’.
FilmSPACE, Chiang Mai Art Museum, 2005
TRADE, the Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, 2005
Cluster, Participant Inc. New York, 2006