Last Messages

Artists

Paolo Cirio
Joey Gracia
Lin Chen
Ray Harris
Erin Linhart
NEGATIVEMEDITATION
Nik Pepsi
Ryder Ripps
Winston Smith
Yoshi Sodeoka
John Zobele
Zieromuko

Curator

Scot Cotterell

Opening: Friday 24 February 2023, 5pm

Mona Foma: Friday 24–Sunday 26 February, 12–5pm

Exhibition continued until 1 April 2023, Wed–Sat 12–5pm

A group exhibition of artists envisioning ‘blackened utopias’; existential threats both faced and future; and the general idea of apocalypses. Marinate on that, a little.

Before the pandemic I was thinking about an exhibition concept that spoke to the human tendency to envision apocalyptic scenarios. I wanted to reflect the notion that science fiction possibly writes future realities and that the density of recorded media has a vastness that eclipses our ability to witness even a minute portion of it.

Then we had this real and existential global threat, a soft apocalypse with tragic outcomes that continue to ripple through the world. It dissipated, humanity survived, but not unscathed. Talk of new normals, riots on the hill, supply shortages and inflation then overshadowed basic human need in new and terrifying ways. A latent, pregnant AI presence looms. We feed our children media we can barely grasp. Epic mountains of speculative digital currency create vast uncanny valleys of wealth and lack.

I am an artist-curator and often my exhibition concepts arise out of my engagement with artworks that are aesthetically or conceptually influencing my artistic output. Then they become this secondary focus or concern and, subsequently, they brighten as a group of ideas and eclipse their status as aesthetic references. I then need to group and present them in the exhibition as a glimmering mass of exceptional individual examples webbed together through proximity and occupation.

–Scot Cotterell, curator