approaching midnight

Steph Fuller (SA) and Emilija Kasumovic (SA)

Curated by Steph Cibich (SA)

8-24 April 2021 | FELTspace

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

Steph Fuller, Portraits of the Elderly, 2020-21

archival inkjet print on fine art rag paper, 40x30cm each, ed 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.

Steph Fuller, The Australian Dream, 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?

Steph Fuller, The Illusion of Permanence, 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.