In a restless world like this is

22 Jun - 7 Sep 24 

Anni Hagberg, Katie Paine, Katrin Koenning, Leonie Brialey, Siri Hayes

Curated by Chantelle Mitchell & Jaxon Waterhouse

How many worlds are within, or nested amongst, this one? Is it possible to traverse them, and what might act as the tethers or links between them?

In a restless world like this is emerges in response to two works held in the City of Darebin collection; Siri Hayes’ large-scale photographs, Lyric Theatre at Merri Creek and Crossing the Merri (both 2003). Inviting responses from Anni Hagberg, Katie Paine, Katrin Koenning and Leonie Brialey, this exhibition reverberates outwards from its sources—the Merri Creek as a physical space, but also the Merri Creek as presented within Hayes’ works—to consider what might reside in the generative spaces within and between worlds. 

Artwork Statement:

For A Patient’s Lament, Katie Paine explores the porous boundaries between illness, madness, grief and convalescence within the context of Bundoora Homestead’s complex history as a repatriation hospital. The series intersperses archival material from the hospital with site images, diagnostic texts and a mechanism for casting lead bullets. Alongside this, are film stills from Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1975 film, The Mirror, a poetic contemplation of the spectral nature of memory and grief in the wake of war, and Hieronymus Bosch’s 1494 painting The Extraction of the Stone of Madness or The Cure of Folly which depicts a surgeon, removing the stone of madness from a patient's head. Paine’s theatrically lit photographic still-lives weave a non-linear narrative that tells the story of a patient haunted by visions of lost loved ones who periodically appear within the homestead’s gardens. This series considers the vulnerability of the medicalised body within the context of bureaucratic and institutional structures.

Read Chantelle Mitchell and Jaxon Waterhouse’s catalogue here

All Exhibition Documentation Images Courtesy: James Henry