TAKE ME, TAKE ME WHERE EVER YOU WANT, 2016
Archival pigment on iridium coated paper, tape
THERE IS NO POWER ON EARTH TO BE COMPARED, 2016
Print on router-cut ACM, Pine, Bolts
EASY FIX, TRUST ME, 2016
Flag pole
ON THE BACK FOOT, MOVING FORWARD, 2016
Manipulated found footage on digital display
"Getting the colours right is not an exact science.” Says Bell. “Giving an approximate view of what we’d see if we were there involves an artistic, visionary element as well – after all, no one’s ever been there before.”
- Dr. Jim Bell, Lead Scientist for the NASA Panoramic Camera Team
The title of HOTEL DEVON ISLAND is a reference to the appropriative sovereign freedoms granted to companies over extraterrestrial territory.
Devon Island is an uninhabited polar desert island used by NASA to conduct simulated missions to Mars due to its remote location and superficial similarities to the barren planet. It is so similar that is has been dubbed “Mars on Earth”.
As NASA is the leading public authority on Mars, it holds a monopoly over the pictorial representation of the planet.
Conspiracy theorists claim that many images supposedly of Mars are actually taken by teams stationed on Devon Island, allowing NASA to project authority over the planet without ever being there.
Similarly, China has been aggressively expanding its claims over the South China Sea through the construction of man-made islands upon existing coral atolls in the Spratly Islands. Though these claims have been challenged by other Asia-Pacific nations, China continues to artificially expand the sovereign boundaries of its nation state by creating fixed land masses.
The exhibition is made up of a body new collaborative works that address questions of power, sovereignty and the role digital images play in both facilitating and undermining these structures. Ideas of image authenticity are interrogated through both spatial and image-based interventions. The source of the imagery in the works is deliberately ambiguous, blurring the relationship between artworks created by the artists and appropriated images mined from digital networks.
