For over a century, Sandy Island appeared 700 miles off the coast of Australia on the maps of The National Geographic Society, The Times of London, and even Google Earth. This established reality hit a snag in 2012, when an Australian survey vessel undiscovered Sandy Island. It hadn’t disappeared due to a natural disaster; it quite simply was never there. This phenomenon of “phantom islands” amounts to an historical game of telephone, where a sailor’s mistaken sighting of land eventually made it onto official maps, turning fiction into fact.
We think of places as concrete, tangible, and immutable, but the concept of a place is no less subjective or slippery than any other aspect of human experience. Two people’s understanding and experience of the same city may be wholly at odds. The added layers of climate change and urban development have rendered once familiar landscapes unrecognizable.
Participating artists:
Jayda Miller
Shadai Marshall
Amy Holleman
Jean Gonzalez Lomasto
Jessica Shoemaker
Cait Maloney
June (Sam) Compton
Bradley Carroll
Wilma Ruth King
Shabnam Miri
Kat Martin
Lawrence Holdsworth
Jackie Bobo
Atiba Smith
Noah Howard
Nolan L. Wright
Ashlan Bishop
Jean Capalbo
Amy Holleman
Tabitha Ott
Caroline Clark
