Command and Control

About

Challenging, confusing, occasionally shocking… yet strangely beautiful. This is the world through the eyes of five internationally acclaimed artists, exhibiting together for the first time in Command & Control. Hansen, Kelly, Neudecker. Latham and Snell reflect on the complex and contradictory relationship between humanity and the natural world — the eulogising and destruction, aestheticising and control. Mariele Neudecker uses sculpture, film and photography to create atmospheric reproductions of natural phenomena. Through the use of diverse chemical and physical processes she creates visually stunning objects, which viewed within the confines of a gallery, create incongruously convincing experiences of the romantic and the sublime, and expose the fine line between reality and fiction. Adam Latham'ssatirical posters are not only a critique of Western neocolonialism, but also a subtle comment on the self-importance of fine art itself. Referencing war propaganda posters and 70s underground comic art, he creates humorous and unnerving slogans that add to a discomfiting viewing experience and uncertainty in the artist's intentions. Artifice and camouflage lie at the heart of Rosie Snell's disquieting landscapes, which examine concealment, disinformation and the physical and psychological impact of warfare on our natural environment. Her abandoned military objects acquire their own ominous beauty as they dissolve into their surroundings. Roger Kelly's dramatic semi-abstract paintings use images of bomb-damaged houses as source material. These photographic fragments are redrawn, rearranged and reworked in non-representational colours and tones, mirroring, in unlikely sugared fashion, the dynamic physical change experienced by the subject matter itself. Ross Hansen makes meticulous colour drawings and paintings of the ‘living dead' of Victorian taxidermy and hunting trophies. His images celebrate the astonishing beauty and diversity of nature while also inviting observations on mortality, cruelty and man's obsession with ownership and taming the wild.