DISTRACTION / Science Gallery Melbourne

My participatory installation Minute Lines just opened at the Science Gallery Melbourne, Australia as part of their fantastic and utterly timely show DISTRACTION curated by Bern Hall, 26 July–2 May 2026. Over its duration, my hope is for the collective creation of miles and miles of beautifully non-instrumentalised time.

DISTRACTION plugs into the streaming torrent of content and the places our brains go when we want to focus on anything but the thing. You know… the thing you’re supposed to be doing right now? Your distraction of choice might be scrolling, daydreaming or exploring a digital universe. Where are we escaping to? What are we missing in the process? Confusion reigns, disinformation spreads and the truth is called into question. Attention becomes profit-driven, and it is hard to know who is really in control. Yet we are creative and connective creatures, alive with an incalculable capacity to surprise. Look through a playful lens at the ways we devote our time and find space for ourselves in an increasingly nonsensical world. When we are bouncing around the whirring, flashing, pinball machine of existence, is our wayward attention a way of coping with the chaos?  

Minute Lines

Will you make time for us? Time stretches and scratches—sometimes flying through our fingers, other times catching and pulling, stuck on the same old thread. We feel it, and move through it as it unravels, links, loops and tangles us up. While we often think in terms of navigating space, this ongoing project ponders how we navigate time. Lean back and get lost in time for a while, using a simple crochet chain stitch to create your minute line. Minute Lines are as long as it takes to make them, and we invite you to fill our spools with time as line wound over the course of the exhibition. A slow form of wool gathering made by hand. Whether you are filling time or killing time, spending time or giving time, capture what you can from the clock and take pleasure in the process. Where do you get lost in time?

Photo by Astrid Mulder