About NICE IS DIFFERENT THAN GOOD
The Art Syndicate. Sydney, NSW, Australia. March — May 2021.
When I was little I was obsessed with LEGO (who am I kidding, I still am). Something I always loved about LEGO is that you were given the options to build a set based on its instructions, but you were also encouraged to use the pieces to make your own creation if you so desired…
When I was putting this show together, I was thinking a lot about the way we admire the protagonists in popular culture and realized something: From Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Into the Woods’ to Christopher Nolan’s ’Batman Begins’ to the politically corrective reboots of old blockbusters, there has been a successful trend that comes from answering the question: “what would this look like in real life?” Cool at first, we have successfully turned storytelling from a symbolic reflection of society into a literal mirror.
What do we lose in that predetermined gaze? To me, it seems we want escapism to be realistic and so demand perfection in reality. Myth, folklore, fantasy, and science-fiction are forced to be rational while our real lives are sensationalized in a way that is perfect for selling us goods and beliefs. Tribes and algorithms inform quick decisions. Stories are easily trapped. Narratives become instructions, advertisements, even propaganda. If you think you know what’s coming, why read further than the headline and familiar buzzwords, right?
Twenty-first century heroism is now defined not by ends, but by means. We applaud vocabulary, fashion, and enthusiasm. We shun the forms of them of which we don’t approve. All the while, good and bad get done right under our noses. We only realize when the deeds are done, often when it’s too late to catch the nasty stuff.
This show is about translating narrative in a way that doesn’t make sense straight away, and in doing that gives you the power to understand it through your own intuition, ethics, and experiences. By breaking down my memories, fables, thoughts, and feelings into colour, contour, material, and text, I hope to remind you of the agency you have in interpreting stories, and, therefore, the agency you have in writing your own understanding of the world around you. I encourage you to look at these moments and characters - pieces of stories - and put them back together the way you want, ether by instinct (like the LEGO instructions) or some other way completely your own.