approaching midnight

Our world is going to end. It’s just a matter of time.

Emerging Artists Steph Fuller (SA) and Emilija Kasumovic (SA) respond to the Doomsday Clock through sensitive investigations of contemporary existence. Curated by Steph Cibich and presented as part of the 2020 FELTspace Emerging Curator Program, this exhibition features new photographic, video and installation works informed by one another’s practice and inspired by collaborative conversations between the artists and curator.

This exhibition is supported by Marble Hill Wines, Arts South Australia and the City of Adelaide.

8-24 April 2021 at FELTspace (Adelaide).

Portraits of the Elderly

Steph Fuller, 2019-2020, inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 30x40cm, ed of 10

This series of photographs seeks to reveal the personhood of some of South Australia’s mature Eucalyptus trees. I wanted to imbue a reverence for the stories that might be behind the stretch marks and scars, and the wrinkled, weather-beaten skin. Why can’t we hold the lived experience of a tree in the same regard as that of a grandparent? These are the real ‘quiet Australians’: silent as they are toppled, engulfed, dismembered. To be so unflinching in death (and so soon forgotten) is unbearably sad.

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Install images

The Australian Dream

Steph Fuller, 2020, single channel video, 12 minutes 54 seconds

When this work was created, Australia was on fire. We watched it get worse every day; news bulletins became a mirror to the sick as we watched our map disappear under icons of fire.

This work shows a garden hose left to run on my back lawn. Water fills the frame, just as fire did. My feelings of helplessness were tied to a fierce rage at our leaders for their denial of the climate emergency. That summer we all became forced spectators of our own incineration - were they not watching?

The Illusion of Permanence

Steph Fuller, 2020-21, single channel video, 10 minutes.

This work is about the suffocating faith that everything that is, will always be; that life as we know it will go on as sure as the stars continue to shine. Dying stars send us the last ghosts of their light, and what should be a harbinger of an end instead furthers the illusion of permanence.

Each twinkling star in this work is a dying arachnid. I should be reluctant to share a work comprised of intentional, pointless deaths; but I am not, because this act of violence is eclipsed by the consequences of denial of the climate emergency. It is not my hand that is bloodied.

Universal transience

Emilija Kasumovic, 2021, polyvinyl acetate, fishing line, wire mesh, hooks, dimensions variable.

In light of the escalating climate crisis, pandemic and calls for social change occurring across the globe, we seem to be trapped in a waiting space with an estranged and uncertain future. Our tendency is to turn away and cling to a familiar way of seeing the world, a way that makes us feel safe and in control. Universal transience is an installation that explores our impermanence and the threshold space through which we experience our world. Resin is a synthetic material affected by time, air, humidity and gravity. This porous characteristic of resin acts as a skin, a sponge which absorbs all phenomena of the moment.

The work considers this sensory threshold, between our skin and all matter that surrounds us. The motion captured within the resin acts as a filter that allows us to see space and each other as continually moving. It is as a veil inviting us to surrender to a space of new becoming, between the unknown and the unfamiliar. A narrow pause between a breath and becoming vapour. A droplet caught in a freeze frame of a single indivisible whole.

Irreversible momentum

Emilija Kasumovic, 2021, salt, plastic vessel, thread, dimensions variable.

This work explores the finite passage of time and our temporal existence within it. A vessel filled with salt is hung from a fixed point and set swinging in a clockwise direction. As it moves it disperses salt in a spiral pattern. Once set in motion, each arch is irreversible until the vessel finally loses its momentum and comes to a halt. Our actions continue to affect this world. As midnight approaches, our window for making reversible change reduces gradually until eventually the moment is passed.

Opening Night

photographs by Daniel Marks