Lacuna

The origins of this object are a museum mount for a mammoth specimen; a steel museum armature occupies space while simultaneously indicating an absence. Lacuna supports the negative space of an absent entity, literally embodying the metaphorical elephant in the room. Lacuna extends Dane Mitchell's investigation into absence and obsolescence. The work interrogates institutional epistemology and enlightenment principles through the intersection of craft, museology and conceptual intervention. The titular "lacuna" references both a void and the cognitive process of logical interpolation. The sculptural apparatus functions dually as presence and absence marker - a museum mount transformed into autonomous sculpture. Originally designed to support a mammoth specimen, it now delineates negative space where it is ‘not’. The installation also creates a surveillance feedback loop between its site (the former University of Canterbury engineering school) and Canterbury Museum where the object is presented on video screens in the museum amongst the dinosaur fossil displays, inviting critical examination of museological practice and institutional authority. Through this intervention, Mitchell foregrounds typically obscured museum infrastructure while questioning the constructed nature of institutional knowledge production.