Detail and Installation view, Things are not what they seem, 2024, RMIT Studio. Photos by William Kang.
Things are not what they seem
Timber, plywood, carpet, rolltop desk, chair, rocks, earth, clocks, various antique objects on desk, vintage lighting, digital video projectors, buttkickers, power amp, speakers, bronze eye sculptures.
A theatrical, multi-valent installation that utilizes material architecture, objects, rocks, video projection, sound and lighting. It is a work of speculative fiction that imagines what happens when the buried, forgotten past finds a way of returning to the present.
At the centre of this work is a site of an active eruption: ancient lithic forces are invading the inner sanctum of a colonial study/artist studio. As the title suggests, Things are not what they seem creates a space of uncanny uncertainty via multiple open narratives and temporalities.
Most of this work was created and presented on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. The Rocks and Earth and the Bird skulls come from Gulidjan and Gadubanud land. I pay respect to their Elders past and present. I acknowledge and honour the unbroken spiritual, cultural and political connection they have maintained to this unique place for more than 2000 generations.
Detail and Installation views, Things are not what they seem, 2024, RMIT Studio. Photos by William Kang.
Through a complex interplay of material and phenomenological architectures formed from video, sound, lighting and objects rich in metaphor, this work is a multi-valent installation that speculates on what happens when the unspoken can no longer be suppressed.
Multiple spaces, temporalities and narratives are employed to decentre the viewer and locate them in a fictional world - a site of active eruption inside a private study. There, the uncanny is deployed as subterranean forces rupture the controlled and rational domain of an unseen occupant who is part of the colonial project.