Nicholas Hales, Katharine Jacobs, Liezel Prins, Marlise Keith, Colleen Alborough, Rat Western

Elysian Fields

26 August - 18 September 2009

A group show dealing with the dual realities of human existence and our need to escape from the physical realities at times. Elysian Fields becomes a symbolic representation of that place that exists out of time and space where the artist can escape to and draw inspiration from. 

Elysian Fields as a term and concept has its roots in Greek Mythology and refers to the section of the underworld that is the final resting place of souls of the heroic, virtuous or mortals related to the gods.

Nicholas Hales is interested in the fact that we live so much of our lives in a virtual world - internet, email and computer games. In computer games we enter a virtual world. We are playing in a virtual world but at the same time existing in the “real world”.  We are existing in two “separate realities” at once.  If we can understand that concept then we can perhaps begin to grasp the concept which a number of eastern spiritual tradition expresses - that this reality is an illusion called  “Maya”. That we exist in what some terms the “ultimate reality” and the Maya simultaneously. That due to us only being able to experience our reality with our five senses we are unable to see through this illusion.

Katharine Jacobs’ work is a continuation of this idea of dual reality and escape. The symbolic implication of the Elysian Fields can be correlated with that space that the artist draws his/her creativity from, or chooses to escape to. "Pedalo for the Cretan Bull (after Picasso)" deals with the creative endeavor as an escape, as inspired by the story of her grandfather, spending years building a boat in a landlocked country, only having to face the realization of never being able to sail it, the act of creation then inevitably becomes the form of escape and not the final result that is implied by the act of sailing. 

Lightning enlightens but also destroys. Zeus, as the administrator of justice and the regulator of the internal and external world, administers lightning (fire from heaven), which can be life-giving or death dealing. 

The Field, by Colleen Alborough considers the relationship between the inner landscapes of the psyche and the exterior social realms we navigate each day. It reflects upon the negotiations and manoeuvres we make each day within the complex society we live in. The Field searches to reconcile this ongoing process of negotiation and to understand the impact these movements (both interior and exterior) have on us on a daily basis.

With Marlise Keith’s work she explores the notion that the human existence is generally about being caught in a state of discontent with which we find ourselves in our present position, be it physically, socially or emotionally. Elysian Fields suggests places, and more importantly a place one might wish to be. Discovering how to exist in the present, for Keith, and appreciating what we actually do have and hence striking a balance between these dual realities of escape and being present, is the precious observance which should be made.

Liezel Prins’ installation is a confirmation about the improbability of specific outcomes and how we are often unknowingly the cause of our own demise. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality. Her work identifies the different meanings things or objects have in our consciousness and how we experience these things. 

Aspiration, Curiosity, Patience, Perspective, Presence..

Rat Western: If Heaven, Enlightenment, the Afterlife and the Locus of Inspiration, are all one and the same place – a place in which souls are conceived and to which they return with the possibility of reinvention and re-returning to a realm of the real – it would then follow that this space of the divine is also the Incubator, Preservation Station and Museum of all concepts everywhere.