WINTER—SPRING - Canberra 100

Image: Kynikos (a study), 2010 Ben Forster. Image: Monster, Erica Seccombe and Tim Senden.
Science Fiction
16 August to 28 September
Science Fiction is comprised of two exhibitions exploring
notions of scientific reality and its mutations within popular
consciousness and media.
From Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) to Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), nothing, it seems,
is more amusing than a mad scientist or an experiment
gone wrong.
While technology is the cement that binds civilisations,
the prospect of it coming unstuck has generated intense
excitement for decades, from irradiated ants in Them (1954),
to the killer Wasp Woman (1954).
Metamorphosis is also central to creatures such as werewolves
and cat people, in whom reason is dangerously mixed with
feral animal instincts. Transformation also fascinates audiences
today. Think of thoroughly modern werewolves, Remis Lupin
in the third Harry Potter novel Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) and
George Sands in Being Human (BBC3 2009). The sci-fi/horror
genre in the arts of literature and film is littered with examples
of men and women who attempt to play God, shape-shift, and
lust for power while being torn by fear of the unknown and the
burning desire to go there, whatever the cost.
Science Fiction - brings together artists and scientists
as researchers Erica Seccombe, Professor Tim Senden
and Ben Forster - all of whom employ bona fide scientific
methodologies to produce work that examines tensions
between science and its suspect appearances in
popular culture.
All three, to some extent work in the ‘God Zone’, albeit with
tongues in cheek, using science to suggest the creation of
creatures that might, in suitable conditions, run amok.
With the style of Hitchcock, they draw upon the familiar and
unthreatening, using common garden insects and the family
pet to produce objects and notions that strike fear at the heart
of rational thought.
Their works critique and even mock the idea of artists being
scientists and vice versa, blending the empirical and rational
with fantastic imagination, so that art and science are
momentarily unified.
Science Fiction is a Centenary of Canberra project, proudly
presented by the ACT Government. It is supported by the
Department of Applied Mathematics, Research School of
Physics and Engineering, the Australian National University
and SymbioticA Research Centre, School of Anatomy and
Human Biology, the University of Western Australia.
Artists: Erica Seccombe, Tim Senden, Benjamin Forster
Curator: David Broker.
Canberra Contemporary Art Space
www.ccas.com.au
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