A conceptually multilayered installation, Ruined Roads explores the ways in which classic books often function as symbols of canonised, even sacred, wisdom within Western culture. Many of us would hesitate to physically desecrate these objects, yet Western culture has a long history of damaging or destroying symbols of sacred knowledge belonging to ‘othered’ cultures. By transforming books into a literal pathway, Ruined Roads invites audiences to consider these contradictions and the values we attach to particular forms of knowledge.

Ruined Roads is also a reflection on Jess’s experience of growing up in the highly urbanised and industrialised western suburbs of Melbourne/Naarm (in Victoria, Australia) before moving to the rural and bucolic Southern Highlands/Gundungurra (in New South Wales, Australia). Now accustomed to expecting soil rather than concrete beneath her feet, Jess often experiences a kind of cognitive dissonance when she notices how rarely, in urban environments, her feet actually come into contact with the land. Instead, they are almost invariably separated from it by layers of concrete.

These layers of concrete become a metaphor for the ways contemporary life can distance us from the land: arguably one of the greatest sources of wisdom available to us.

At the heart of Ruined Roads is a simple question: will audiences choose to walk on the books? And, if they do, what responses are elicited?

Ruined Roads has been installed at Articulate Project Space (Leichhardt, NSW) and Way Out Artspace (Kandos, NSW).