Concrete Playground

Hazelhurst Regional Gallery is making the most of its garden with an exhibition of billboards titled Collide-O-Rama by Australian artist, Maria Kozic. Kozic has worked across many mediums of art since beginning her practice in the late 1970s, and these billboards are not her first expression in this form. In 1990, she created Maria Kozic is Bitch, a billboard artwork in which a lingerie-clad Miss Kong (only pretty, and human) glares threateningly at passersby, crushing Ken dolls in her giant hands.

Kozic shot the images for Collide-O-Rama in her adopted home town, the Big Apple, and while they are somewhat indistinguishable, being cropped and close-up, the images retain a classic NYC grittiness. Kozic’s four photographs are scattered through the gallery’s Aussie bush garden and car park, and part of their meaning is derived from this placing: they are discovered by stepping with trepidation through ferns and hedges, a moment at once artistically contrasting and straight out of an episode CSI. Collide-O-Rama is curated by artist Daniel Mudie Cunningham, and forms part of the ongoing garden billboard project at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery.