Girthy With Slim Edges – Re-think, Re-look, Re-map Aus

In 2017, two architecture students of Newcastle University, Owen Kelly and Bobbie Bayley embarked on a giant Architecture journey by bicycle from the east to west coast’s of Australia. A journey right through the middle of the country, they called this The Grand Section.

Attempting to learn what they believe is largely ‘left out’ of their education, Bobbie and Owen pursued to understand their own country and its architecture to be able to design buildings to better suit the driest inhabited continent on earth. They decided to slowly get to know the country and ride their push bikes 7650km over 10 months, have 19 ‘stops’, 19 exhibitions, pedal 6,303,600 times, have an encounter with one aggressive horse, 12.5 punctures and zero ‘psychopaths’, all in one pair of shoes at an average of 12.5km/hour.

Stopping for one week in 19 places, the duo would engage with locals, document and analyse the place, the buildings and how and why people are living the way they are. At the end of the week they would present back their findings to the communities they stayed with in the form of an exhibition, sharing what they had learnt, seen and studied.

This cross section of studying Australia's Architecture so closely and slowly is unprecedented. The work they produced enroute is collated into the exhibition, “Girthy With Slim Edges”. Touring nationally in 2018, the exhibition broadens the conversation about architecture and Australia, delivering Australia's innards to its outer fringe giving insight into the reality of Australia and the regional and remote areas of this incredible country.

Girthy With Slim Edges returns home to Cessnock Regional Art Galley in July/August 2019, and accompanies recent work created by the duo looking at the bigger place, the whole of Australia rather than the 19 individual parts previously studied. The work looks largely at perceptions, understanding, knowledge and projections of Australia contrasting and complimenting this with the parts of the country that we do know. It often appears that the parts of Australia which are vital to life, existence, our collective history and our future are so often invisible to us coastal edge clingers. This exhibition now makes them visible.

Don’t miss out on seeing this Australia centric exhibition and the chance to get to know your larger home better.