Ann Debono is presenting a new suite of paintings that respond to the construction site of the Westgate Bypass Flyover at Metro Arts, Brisbane, marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in Queensland.

Responding to the construction of the Westgate Bypass Flyover adjacent to the cargo docks of the Port of Melbourne, this suite of paintings imaginatively elaborates the incomplete structures that Debono has photographically documented for several years. Spatial infinity approaches tangibility when it is framed and pierced by the converging lines of railway tracks, series of pylons receding into the distance, cranes lurching into an abyssal blue vault, or the sinuous ascent of an elevated roadway under construction.

Articulated in terms of painting: these structures take the flat plane of the sky as a material and manufacture it into an anticipant void where massive edifices will be realised. For Debono, this site is saturated with a hubristic excess and spectacle that is reminiscent of the story of the Tower of Babel. Siding with the mortals, her paintings attempt to envision the new and transcendent visual possibilities latent in this complex of transport and development.