Invasive

Rebecca Selleck

Gallery 4
Opening 03.04.19 6-8pm
Artist Talks 25.04.19 6-7pm

Since I was a small child, I’ve been fascinated by the inconsistent relationships humans have with other animals. We easily empathise with them on the one hand, but disengage on the other: denying them agency and treating them as objects. I use my ongoing practice to reciprocally investigate and challenge my own perceptions within a culture of conflicting truths. I’ve formed a specific sculptural language that gives communicable presence to the moment my conflicting perceptions and their accompanying sensations clash: The push and pull of empathy and disengagement that results in perceptual dissonance.

‘Invasive’ is the latest installation in this continuing exploration. In Australia, we have an interesting relationship with introduced species. Many that dominate the landscape today as pests or indentured species were brought over with the First Fleet as means to create industry. But, as species that didn’t evolve with the land, they have become another layer of forced environmental change that has had enduring consequences. Despite the mass destruction of complex ecosystems from the introduction of unsuitable livestock, crops, and farming methods onto an already well-managed continent, the husbandry of animals such as cows and sheep has become part of our national identity. A notion of taming a wild landscape that has endured.

In this immersive installation, the gallery is transformed into the interior of a small home where time and space have uncomfortably entangled to embody hypocrisies evident within our national identity. You’re invited to interact with the work and animal forms activated by breath, body warmth and displaced movement. Using a mix of found objects, bronze casts, electronics and printed motifs, the installation overlays time and place to express the need for human accountability and the painful complexity of animal and environmental ethics in Australia. Through these physical expressions of internal hypocrisies, I hope to create interactive spaces that, while uncomfortable, become their own questioning entities.