Open Sky continues Curran’s ongoing research into the impacts of screen-based technologies on embodied experience and modes of attention. This body of work developed from the gallery’s courtyard space which highlights the subtle interactions between the architectural surroundings and the light of the changing seasons. Reflecting on the double meaning in Chinese philosophy of tian (天) as both sky and cosmos, Curran’s works - and the processes involved in their making – invite access to different modes of time and attentiveness to what remains of the everyday beyond the spaces of the screen. They explore slow or vacant time, inner contemplation, and drifting states of consciousness where the sky becomes the physical space of the earth’s atmosphere, subject to changing light conditions and weather patterns, but also a metaphorical space between visible and invisible worlds terrestrial and celestial.

In these works colour is an affirmation of presence and the act of noticing. It is spatial, material, rhythmic and spiritual, revealing the artist’s intimate connections to place and her engagement with the more-than-human world found in her everyday encounters with plants, trees, animals, insects and weather. Colour is gathered and patched together in densely stitched layers of painted cloth and dyed fabrics, suggesting the elusiveness of sensory experience and inner moments of illumination.
Several works use quilting methods as painted cloths are pieced and stitched together. These paintings maintain their softness, creases, folds, and frayed edges. Bodily connections that extend to the quilt’s traditional use as providers of warmth and protection associated with acts of sleep, rest and dream. These connections hold significance as the quilt’s function may support a utopian intention, one that projects new possibilities for transformation through deep rest and slowing down, one that pushes back against the screen’s subdual of sunlight and its colonisation of the spaces of daydream.