https://cargocollective.com/katesweetapple/Mr-Salmon-and-Mrs-Sparrow-Experimental-Cartography

 

This exhibition, “Mr. Salmon and Mrs. Sparrow,” by Kate Sweetapple is a cartography experiment that is a collection of six different maps of Sydney, Australia. Yet each map is only comprised of one type of unique, unusual reference point: celestial bodies, fish, birds, or people whose last names are colors. The result is six different art pieces in the shape of the map of Sydney. I find this these maps especially interesting because, even though this exhibition is geographically precise and demographically accurate, the maps provide no “useful” information.

I really enjoyed this exhibition because the artist, Kate Sweetapple, painstakingly remained so scientifically accurate yet contradicted herself at the same time by having these six maps be practically useless for locating places or being informative. The only purpose that these maps were made for was to be artwork–not for function. Out of the infinite number of objects to redesign, I thought that the artist choosing to redesign a map into art was an interesting choice since the primary purpose that map is usually made only for function and relaying information. But to me, this contradiction between the art and the function of the map is what makes this piece interesting.