Tonight is the opening night of my very first solo show :) In the coolest venue: an artist run cafe and gallery space in Peckham called the Small White Elephant. MY show is called Laterstate Oasis and here is the little text I wrote to introduce it. I'm excited :)))) And below are a few sketches for things that i've put in it.
Pick up your feet and stroll on friends, to the centre of the Jungle (the Small White Elephant) where you will find the Laterstate Oasis on the furthermost frontiers of the Swaglands. Come and see the latest painted, sewn, dyed and printed creations of Philly Hunt - from the Swaglands.
Find along your way the Ghost of Tom Joad, the Braxton Brothers of Summer Bay, kangaroos with ghetto blasters playing Lana Del Rey on the way to the Springsteen show, Outback cinemas and a lone cowgirl seen through renegade vegetation and ruinous civilization. Be warned - there may be upsetting scenes of dead savannah animals as a result of drought caused by global warming.
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Our vicarious lives represent our ideals whether know it or not, and those lives are often presented to us in visual forms, leaving us with a myriad of imagery to work our imaginations through. That imagery is what I work with. Making use of the the fanatical mindset of admiring or idealising something or someplace from afar, I aim to give the features of our vicarious lives a totemic status to bring those ideals home, for us to address and recognise those ideals, and to implement a new space/land for them.
Specific examples include the soap opera fan world, the pop notion of the retreat (particularly desert island and wilderness retreats) the Swagmen of post-Depression era Australia, and cult music fandom. Personal (but of universal appeal) emotional attachment to landscape occurs in reference to specific locations such as the Australian Outback.
All this is placed in the context of an alternative land that is rising out of environmental destruction and into atmospheric and social stability as a result. The Swaglands is where we are.
A range of references to current Environmental activism efforts and concerns can be seen throughout the artworks.
This is an ongoing body of work, but is partially in recent response to Episode 6 of the Guardian podcast 'The biggest story in the world' : http://
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Opening night on the 7th May from 5-8pm. BYOB.
The spectacle will last until 20th May for those of you who get lost in the tarmac.
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| busy busy studio times - Rachael making her tent for the Imperial Collect festival this weekend. Clever lady! |
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| peak at a new painting in progress |
Last week I had a super cool opportunity to be interview by the amazing design and research consultancy practice IDEO about how i try to reduce my waste production, and generally reduce my carbon footprint, combining this into my art practice. Three of them came to my house and bought a film camera and mics and rigged their stuff up in my garden and we recorded a conversation for an hour and a half about things ecological! The film is being shown at an event with Ikea designers at their Swedish headquarters, to help Ikea think about their sustainability responsibilities. It was a really cool thing to be asked about something i'm passionate about and also about my own art, and to have it recorded by such a cool company (Ideo gave a lecture while I was at uni and it was one of the only lectures that has stuck with me; they're all about person-centric research) and presented to a company that I have daily beef with - the amount of strewn cheap and broken Ikea furniture on the streets of London makes my blood boil! I also got paid for it which was brilliant. I showed them all my dyeing from kitchen by-products, and my homemade eco laundry powder and cleaning methods etc. Good times! And below is a recent black beans dye session.
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