Please join us for our Opening Reception
Friday, November 6,
From 6 - 8 pm
&
Meet the Artist
Saturday, November 7,
From 2 - 4 pm
The Portal is an exhibition of paintings interrogating the boundary between humanity and the
natural world. Re-imagining conventions of landscape and wildlife painting from a queer,
post-humanist perspective, the idea is to provoke questions about the centering of the human
gaze, the real and artificial boundaries between different planes of existence, and the (Western)
differentiation between civilisation and the natural world.
These new works explore boundaries, real and imagined. The boundary between humanity and
nature unfolds into a study of the frontier between technology and biology, urban and rural, the
physical and the spiritual, between this universe and the next.
An exploration of trail camera photography for my exhibition Tree Island in 2019 revealed the
visual language for this series. The brief burst of infrared light, the startled reaction of an animal
encountering alien technology, inspired a deeper exploration of encounters between worlds. In the
new works, the monochromatic high contrast of infrared photography is layered with the subtle
tones of artificial moonlight from horror television and cinema. The animal moves from passive
subject of technical photography to main character: engaging the viewer and the viewer’s world
directly, as we contemplate the mystery of what the animal sees when they look at us.
Depicting the animals as individuals subverts the tradition of representing animals as idealised
archetypes of themselves. Injuries and “deformities” are highlighted to express character rather
than edited away. Anomalous characteristics like leucism and albinism represent sacred and
magical powers rather than curious or problematic differences.
Animals wandering through the urban fringes raise questions through their contrast. What do we
see if we imagine what they see? Reflections in water invoke mirror universes. Is there an
alternative to this world? Eclipses and movement of celestial bodies create temporal ambiguity,
and represent the realignment of great forces. There is darkness all around, but we can glimpse the
promise of the light.
