What’s the Matter
Hastings City Art Gallery
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Te Whare Toi O Heretaunga
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March 2022
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Hastings City Art Gallery 〰️ Te Whare Toi O Heretaunga 〰️ March 2022 〰️
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of the black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
— Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
We live in a time of anxiety; trouble lurks at every turn. Under the ongoing shadow of biological insecurity, we are constantly brought face-to-face with the real or speculative extinction of humankind. What’s the Matter plays with psychic discomfort and damaged and shattered imagery, it invites the viewer to experience instability; exploring the materials of a flawed humanity. Each component of the installation offers its own journey, history and vital force - deeper realities lie concealed beneath their perceivable surfaces. Wrecked, burnt and decaying manufactured materials carry qualities of obsolescence, they are freed from functionality and the empty promises of human technology and instead suggest the possibility of a dark vitality propelling us forward. What’s The Matter lauds a species heading for certain doom, the debased euphoria of obliteration. A fleeting gasp of planetary breath and lick to taste the char.
— Fillary, What’s the Matter
Photography courtesy of The University of Auckland