Margaret Roberts Triangle & Circle 1 & 4, 2016, a drawing installation in string, wood, nails and actual space, at Work Out at Articulate project space. Photos: Peter Morgan

Another version of Triangle & Circle is made in Work Out at Articulate project space in Sydney in October 2016. It overlays Triangle & Circle 1 with Triangle & Circle 4. The two overlaid drawings only differ in size, but this difference means that their interaction creates another way in which the relationship between the virtual space of the plan and the actual space of the wall become the subject of the work. This relationship occurs because the string lines of the overlaid drawings interact to create a perspectival illusion of deeper space, while the hanging rulers demand attention also be given to the physicality of the wall surface. This spatial dialogue was first pointed out to me by Nola Farman, at the end of the Work Out opening.

Triangle & Circle was developed during a resdiency in Rome earlier in 2016. It was titled Triangle & Circle to encourage visitors to turn the wooden rulers (acting as compass-arms) to make the circles that the title claims accompany the triangles that are drawn in graphite or string on the wall. It is intended to include visitor participation as a way of recognising the actual space in which the work is located.

Triangle & Circle is intended to acknowledge actual space because it is designed to represent a building that, like all buildings, occupies and encompasses actual space. This relationship to actual space may be taken for granted when buildings are discussed primarily as buildings. But when compared with artworks—that are generally spatially autonomous in the sense that the actual space in which an artwork is located usually plays no important part in its purpose or meaning—buildings have more in common with spatial artworks like installations than they do with artworks generally.

Triangle & Circle comes out of an interest in the documentation of artworks that acknowledge actual space and time, in particular in ways in which that acknowledgement of actual space and time can be retained in the reduction that occurs in representation.

Thus, as well as acknowledging actual space through visitor interaction, Triangle & Circle also hopes to emphasise the building's temporal openness by representing it at a stage at which its existence is still mainly in the future.

A summary (or documentation) of Triangle & Circle was developed during the residency and first shown at the Drawing Conversations Exhibition at the National Art School in September 2016, as Triangle & Circle 3. It is a summary because it shows the two relationships the circles make with the triangles in the geometric planning of Sant'Ivo, while using just one triangle.

Read interview with the artist on the background to these works.

The works discussed here were developed and partly made during a 3-month National Art School Sydney Residency in Drawing at the British School at Rome during 2016.