Flying Out (Firecracker), Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 2024

Bolus

As part of Flying Out (Firecracker) at Tolarno Galleries Melbourne

10 - 24 February 2024.

Group show included Hannah Gartside, Guruwuy Murrinyina, Georgia Spain, Justine Varga, Elizabeth Willing

Bolus is an interpretation of the portable modular cattle gates used to contain, organise, and direct livestock. Tools in our prolific and problematic livestock industry, these gates can be linked together to form compartmentalised structures, channels, temporary yards, or functional gateways. My version of this gate is intestinal, drawing links between the gate and the gut as thresholds, filtration systems for our technologically driven diet.

The alimentary canal is impacted by the food we eat, and in turn we manipulate, modify, and mutate our food to suit our dietary desires. Like hospitality, a set of ethics governs what we welcome into our food chain, from seed to sewerage. Chemicals, animals, genetically modified plants, bacteria, yeasts, and pharmaceutical medicines are just a few of the products/parasites crossing the threshold. Food technology poses ever evolving challenges to the alimentary canal which acts as the filtering threshold for the body. Bolus features bulges kinks, and folds, speculating what the gut might look like in response to food technology, trauma, or mutation. Similarly, the imperfections of the recycled timber, clues to its previous life, have been retained purposefully. - Artist Statement

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body and Metro Arts.