Kate Matthews' VR series Everywhen was inspired by Indigenous concepts

Everywhen is also the title of Canberra artist Kate Matthews' virtual reality series, in which, inspired by the title idea, she has appropriated the Google Street View platform and challenges concepts of time.

It is on as part of the group show Gestures Gathered along with works from Hank Reynolds, Freya Gaunt and Janhavi Salvi.

The exhibition is curated by Sophia Childs and Clementine Belle McIntosh.

"It's a group of works centred around the idea of place and interacting with place," Matthews says.

"Mine is of digital work."

Visitors can put on VR headsets and experience three of Matthews' collaged 360-degree photospheres of three urban and rural locations in Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country.

Each VR headset hangs on a stand made from recycled materials and found objects collected from the sites depicted - the latter including a milk crate to represent Garema Place.

Matthews visited six sites - also including Gibraltar Falls at Tidbinbilla and Lake George - over 12 months, taking photographs from the same vantage points at different times and in different seasons and weather conditions before assembling them into the final collages.

These works have also been inserted into the digital public realm, ready to be found and explored online on Google Maps.

"It's digital public art."

Matthews began the project last year after undertaking The Bundian Way Arts Exchange at the ANU.

She says it was "a brilliant program to introduce Indigenous ways of thinking to non-Indigenous participants, de-colonialising our arts practices and making sure we share acts of active reconciliation with expanded ideas on cultural practices".

"I no longer wanted to make work about our public spaces without considering and respecting how First Nations people considered these places."

In many non-Western cultures, she says, "time is not as linear as we often think of it - not past, present and future" - rather it is "networked".

Matthews came to Canberra from Melbourne seven years ago to study at the Australian National University School of Art and Design.

She has worked at galleries and institutions including PhotoAccess and the National Portrait Gallery alongside her art practice.

Matthews has had a solo exhibition in Melbourne and three Emerging Artist Support Scheme opportunities including a residency at PhotoAccess (before she worked there) as well as a commission from the ACT Legislative Assembly.

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"The pandemic offered me a lot of opportunities for growth," Matthews says - including online study.

The Everywhen series was funded by the ACT Government and ArtsACT through Homefront Grants.

Asked what's next for her, Matthews says, "I think I'd like to make VR more interactive - closer to a video game".

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