L A WAS HERE
Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane
Jaggera & Turrbal Country
March 25th - April 14th 2026
LA WAS HERE - 2025 - welded steel mesh, synthetic polymer paint - 86 x 86 x 12 cm
a tiny hand
grasps a rusty nail
aping the gestures
of those who came before
crafting a text(ure)
an information sensation
scribed in secret
into the surface
of a playground toilet door
defiant self-actualization
broadcasting
into the future
L A WAS HERE
this child soon learns
the world of words
on the page
on the tongue
in the ear
in the mind
can achieve
relieve
and deceive
what do you really mean?
what do I really mean?
conversation
a performance
the present situation
played out in the light
of our common conditioning
mimicking various codes
we teach each other
meaning
every word holds a truth
narrating the condition
in which it
and its transmitter
currently exist
from a granny flat
in Gail’s backyard
on Kaurna Yerta
Nurlongga
the bend in the river
a psychic reunion
with youthful exuberance
terrifying desires
boogie nights
experimentation
accusation
and violence
a location of lessons in language learned
these words here
forged and formed
cultured or coarse
offer understanding
and misunderstanding
secreted
into familiar material
extracted
by Grandma’s
Cousin Jacks and Cousin Jennys
the sleek mystique of words
once thought too slippery to grasp
L A is learning
to unwrap and unravel
to read backwards
to listen sideways
to speak up
'LA was here' a short film made in Nurlongga on Kaurna Yerta by Sam Roberts, commissioned by Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane.
CAREFULLY - 2025 - welded steel mesh, synthetic polymer paint - 86 x 86 x 12 cm
ADJUSTING - 2025 - welded steel mesh, synthetic polymer paint - 86 x 86 x 12 cm
BEAUTIFUL - 2025 - welded steel mesh, synthetic polymer paint - 86 x 86 x 12 cm
MATERIALS - 2025 - welded steel mesh, synthetic polymer paint - 86 x 86 x 12 cm
ON THE WALL - 2025 - welded steel mesh, synthetic polymer paint - 86 x 86 x 12 cm
When Will I Be Famous? - 2026 - stirling silver - 12 x 3 x 3 cm
Especially For You - 2026 - stirling silver - 16 x 3 x 3 cm
Don’t Mess With A Missionary Man - 2026 - copper, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 15 x 5 x 5 cm
(let's go) Outside - 2025 - copper, ammonia patina, native bee’s wax - 15 x 5 x 5 cm
Boys In Town (get me out of here) - 2025 - copper, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 20 x 5 x 5 cm
Human Behavior - 2025 - copper, urea patina, Native bee’s wax - 20 x 5 x 5 cm
That's The Way Love Goes - 2025 - copper, ammonia patina, native bee’s wax - 20 x 5 x 5 cm
Nothing Compares 2 U - 2026 - copper, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 20 x 5 x 5 cm
I Got Life (Mother) - 2026 - copper, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 20 x 5 x 5 cm
Detatchable Penis - 2025 - copper, tin solder, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 25 x 5 x 5 cm
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (who loves me) - 2025 - copper, ammonia patina, native bee’s wax - 25 x 5 x 5 cm
Born Slippy - 2025 - copper, tin solder, ammonia patina, native bee’s wax - 30 x 5 x 5 cm
I'm Afraid Of Americans - 2025 - copper, tin solder, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 30 x 5 x 5 cm
Kool Thing - 2026 - copper, tin solder, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 30 x 5 x 5 cm
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - 2026 - copper, tin solder, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 30 x 5 x 5 cm
You Make Me Feel (mighty real) - 2025 - copper, tin solder, ammonia patina, native bee’s wax - 35 x 5 x 5 cm
Everybody In The Place (fairground mix) - 2025 - copper, tin solder, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 35 x 5 x 5 cm
Hit That Perfect Beat (Boy) - 2025 - copper, tin solder, ammonia patina, native bee’s wax - 40 x 5 x 5 cm
Real Wild Child - 2026 - copper, tin solder, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 40 x 5 x 5 cm
What's Going On - 2025 - copper, tin solder, ammonia patina, native bee’s wax - 40 x 5 x 5 cm
The Queen Is Dead - 2025 - copper, tin solder, urea patina, native bee’s wax - 40 x 5 x 5 cm
Pull Up To The Bumper - 2026 - copper, silver solder, ammonia patina, native bee’s wax - 64 x 8 x 8 cm
(big) LA WAS HERE - 2026 - copper, silver solder - 15 x 30 x 10 cm
Enjoy The Silence - 2026 - galvanised steel, epoxy paint - 39 x 8 x 8 cm
Ain't No Love (ain't no use) - 2026 - aluminium - 46 x 15 x 15 cm
Boys Don't Cry - 2026 - aluminium - 46 x 20 x 12 cm
R E S P E C T - 2025 - aluminium - 52 x 12 x 12 cm
The Mercy Seat - 2025 - brass - 65 x 8 x 8 cm
Music For Strings, Percussion And Celesta (Movement III) - 2025 - brass, silver solder - 48 x 8 x 8 cm
Here Comes Your Man - 2025 - brass, silver solder - 50 x 8 x 8 cm
L A WAS HERE (further reading)
Belonging is a fundamental human need. As a species, we have developed myriad modes of communication within community (both words derived from the Latin communis—“common”) attempting to achieve and sustain this sense of connection.
The most obvious—and ubiquitous—of these modes is the inventive code of written and spoken language. However, almost every human activity broadcasts information and meaning: our gestures, labour, and aesthetics all transmit coded messages within community.
Mathematician and electrical engineer Claude Shannon’s seminal thesis, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, elegantly postulates that communication occurs when information is transferred between distinct entities through a “communication channel.” A “sender” encodes a “message” into a “signal,” which is then decoded by a “receiver” back into the message. “Noise” may perturb the quality of transmission, resulting in information decay, or “entropy.”
For this basic principle to operate effectively, both transmitter and receiver must be able to read the same code.
Driven by this need for belonging, humans being engage their differing emotional capacities, ever-expanding communication channels and networks, and a desire to assert and express the creative self in communication. These variables result in the simultaneous operation of multi-layered systems of human communication within community. Then there is noise and entropy to contend with; unlike Shannon’s model, lived human experience introduces disruption and distortion at every stage of the communicative process, through imperfect language systems, fluctuating receptivity, and the constant possibility of misinterpretation. That humans continue to optimistically navigate communis, pursuing understanding and acceptance despite these pitfalls, is testament to our enduring desire to find commonality.
LA WAS HERE is a series of sculptural works exploring the material, symbolic, and transmissive potential of written language, employing the “English” code filtered through the playful aesthetic of a Queer Artist.
The words explored in these artworks are intentional but uncomplicated: some direct, others ambiguous, some puerile toilet-door humour. Developed into forms that attempt to give equal weight to word, form, material, and meaning, the letterforms are woven into puzzles of optical “noise.” Copper—mined by paternal Cornish ancestors on South Australia’s Copper Coast—is extensively employed, alongside other materials selected for their particular properties or perceived ‘value’. Native bee’s wax, found on the sand of Maslin Beach, South Australia’s first official unclad beach, broken from a hive high in an under croft by marauding birds. The artwork titles, borrowed from popular music of my youth open further layers of meaning. These 3D graffiti works, made in very specific circumstances and location (A granny flat, in Mother Gail’s backyard, in ‘Nurlongga’ on Kaurna Country), are intended to function simultaneously as a communication channel and as noise or disruption within that channel.
LA WAS HERE, covertly scratched into the paint of a playground toilet door by eight-year-old Lincoln, now reframed through hindsight and comprehension, with recognition of how poignant this statement of self-affirmation was—and remains.
Lincoln Austin 2026