Alex Gawronski's large installation Threshold is part of a series called Ghosts, and Alex is one of the two artists who appears in the three venues of The National 2017: New Australian Art. So what Alex has done is actually taken a piece of the distinctive architecture of each venue and relocated it into one of the other venues, so the Art Gallery New South Wales's modernist grid ceiling is at the MCA, the MCA's very grand Art Deco doors have been relocated to Carriageworks, and here at the Art Gallery New South Wales, we have one of the most distinctive features of Carriageworks, the extraordinary large steel columns which support the structure there.

Carriageworks, of course, was built in the 1880s, and it was one of the largest industrial complexes in the Southern Hemisphere. It was built to service the train industry, which had transformed New South Wales economically. Once those trains were able to go out into the regions, bring produce to Sydney, et cetera, the city developed very, very quickly. Part of that economic boom led to the creation of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. So what we have with the Carriageworks steel columns is this extraordinary functional classical architecture in steel, made industrially, transported into Art Gallery New South Wales's grand neoclassical revival vestibule, which also has columns, but these very beautiful Corinthian-topped stone columns.

So it's this real juxtaposition of two architectural forms which have a similar origin, which represent two different attitudes in the late 19th century: one on industrial modernism, one on the long history of grand arts and culture, which they were trying to build into Sydney at the same time. What Alex's work is also doing, of course, is actually asking you to think about how a museum context makes an artwork, in a sense. If these columns were in Carriageworks, and Carriageworks wasn't an art venue, would they be art? We know they're made by an artist, they're transported into an art gallery, so they're immediately framed into a different context which gathers those meanings around it.

Overhead here we have a work by Sydney based artist Alex Gawronski, called "Overhead" from his Ghosts series, which is a commission for The National. Alex has for many, many years worked in a number of different ways in the Australian art world, particularly the Sydney art world. So he's an artist obviously, he's a writer, he's a teacher. He also has run a number of artist run spaces. So the whole ecology of the way in which the art world operates is of fascination to him. He's particularly interested in the way in which the art world structures relationships between artists, dealers, audiences, collectors, etc, critics and in the way the architectures of art galleries determine, or impact on our experience of art works.

So he's done a number of instillations, which have sort of transformed gallery spaces in various ways. He's turned a gallery space into a cell, by gating it off with bars. So it's almost like a prison for an artist. He's turned a gallery space into a court room, built the architecture of a court room, as if it's a place of judgement upon artists. He has turned gallery spaces into cubicle like places, you know office spaces. You know a space for working, for labour but in a very dematerialized way, for artists. So he's sort of played with these ideas.

So for The National, he and I were speaking about that kind of intervention and he came up with this wonderful idea of looking at the three organisations in The National. The Art Gallery of New South Wales, the MCA, and Carriageworks through their architectures. Looking at the way in which their architectures form part of their histories but also talking a little bit about the way in which our cultural institutions, in a sense, have transformed certain forms of architecture and how culture itself absorbs different forms of architecture, or different historical uses of buildings.

So he's taken a little bit of one institution and transplanted it into another through his project. Here we have a ceiling overhead, which is reminiscent of the grand entrance space ceilings of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, from the early 1970s. There's kind of concrete style, aggregate, gridded, modernist ceiling. So you get a little sense of the gallery perhaps as you walk through this space. At Carriageworks has taken the grand deco entrance doorway of the old MCA building, originally office but also sort of a public office, sort of administrative space entrance way into Carriageworks. The Art Gallery of New South Wales he's taken some of the iron work pillars from the 19th century industrial rail sheds into that purpose built but sort of semi, like a neoclassical art space of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. So it's a conversation between spaces but also talks a little bit about the way in which we've culture transformed spaces.

Here we have what may be an immediately recognisable, or if not immediately recognisable, then at least uncannily familiar structure to many people. It's Alex Gawronski's work, "Portal" from the broader series "Ghosts" that spans all three sites of the National. For the work here, we have inherited the old entrance to the MCA on Circular Quay. Alex's work is deeply grounded in institutional critique. He is interested in the social and economic and political structures that underpin and govern institutions, and so for the National, he was interested in reflecting on the collaborative curatorial model that we were working with this project. He proposed taking an identifiable feature, architectural feature of each institution, and transposing it into one of the other institutions.

So here at Carriageworks, we've inherited this almost 1:1 scale replica of the old MCA entrance with its 1930's relief sculpture. The Art Gallery has inherited Carriageworks' industrial columns in their neoclassical vestibule, and the MCA has inherited the iconic concrete gridded modernist ceiling from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and this has been transplanted into one of the MCA galleries at the show.