The Big Lap: Mapping the vernacular landscape 2025-26

AG505534
handbound artist book with sculpted cover and pencil frottage on washi from signage, footpaths, street furniture, monuments, plastic waste and other surfaces encountered while travelling around Australia
24 x 32 x 2 cm (h x w x d)

The Big Lap was devised as a portable art project responding to the experience of travelling around Australia for twelve months in a caravan. Using pencil frottage, the pages contain a record of the low relief, visual information that was presented on signage, footpaths, street furniture, monuments, plastic waste and other surfaces (including a surprising number of council rubbish bins!) that I encountered on my Antipodean odyssey in 2025-2026. Presented together, the pages map my experience as a tourist in my country of birth, as well as the way that the different regions of this vast continent choose to present and promote themselves to visitors.

Acknowledgement:

The images in this book have been created entirely through frottage (rubbings) from signage, memorials, plaques, street furniture (including council rubbish bins), and other found surfaces that I encountered while travelling around Australia in a caravan. This includes signage, memorials, etc. utilising Aboriginal motifs. Together, the pages map the Australian cultural vernacular through public presentations of place.

I would not usually incorporate Aboriginal motifs in my work, mindful of the fraught history of white artists appropriating indigenous cultures. However, in this context, I felt it important to acknowledge that I was travelling on Aboriginal lands, through a multitude of Aboriginal Countries, on which I was undisputedly the tourist. Excluding Aboriginal content would have presented, literally, a white-washed account of Australia’s cultural landscape.  

The Aboriginal motifs in this book are all from public areas such as historical plaques, signage at national parks and tourist destinations, footpaths, and public buildings including, in one instance, public toilets. I would like to pay my respects to the elders and traditional custodians of all the Countries through which I travelled during my Big Lap.

Should this book be acquired, I will be donating half of any monies I receive to the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, which supports and promotes a broad spectrum of Aboriginal art centres across Australia.  

Jazmina Cininas, 2026

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