Sports Decorated III
2013
Woven nylon cord, basketball rim, enamel, MDF, custom made basketballs
Approx. 180x120x40cm

"Onside" Casula Power House, Sydney, February 2013

Finalist, 2015 Darebin Art Prize

Sports equipment is engineered to fulfil the technical requirements of its respective game. In professional-level sport, the object rarely has any added aesthetic qualities, colour is generally taken from the original material, or added for visibility, and form follows function. The Sports Decorated series transforms the net of a basketball goal system from a woven net into a woven macramé hanger cradling one or several size 7 basketballs.

The basketball net is designed solely to indicate when a shot has been made, and the transformation of the net in Sports Decorated makes it inoperable. The consequence from the somewhat defunct craft of macramé is a strange object, its only real function as decoration; this natural inbreeding of objects creates a strange dichotomy, the object whose form follows function, and the object whose form has not much function at all.