Artists: Hazel O’Sullivan - Jack Otway - Joseph Aina - Jonathan Tignor - Lau Yee Vanessa Fong - Oyrania Vakoulis-Morris - Ana Milenkovic - Zoe MacCormack - Moussa Saleh - Jo Kitchen - Elina Yumasheva

Twilight Contemporary presents Fantasyland, an exhibition of eleven artists exploring the act of imagining and expressing a fictional land.

Throughout the exhibition, you will notice the act of fantasising offers artists a platform for personal and emotional exploration, weaving together the subconscious, the dreamlike, and the grotesque. The works seem to be windows to which the viewer is tasked to find what lies upon where depictions of unusual, unbelievable worlds of blue monsters, flying horses, and otherworldly creations showcase inventiveness on the iconographic rather than formal level.

Inconsistent with the magical, dreamlike scenes, more mechanical fantasies are also present, where a sense of how the works are created seems surprisingly conspicuous. Labour-intensive practices are at play where the act of construction or deconstruction rule as reflection on our fragile moment in time. Remnants of materials, or cutouts of old paintings are weaved through the materials of the now to create dreamlike structures. Structures or forms that feel indicative of an imagined land far far away.

Abstraction also plays its role. Erratic and organic mark-making appears to respond to our current reality, producing a blurred, formless state that implies today’s world is, in itself, a fantasyland—immaterial and confusing. The attempt to represent the world becomes fantastical in its vision, leading to the creation of indistinct impossibilities vivid in colour.

We can trace fantasy arts origins to Greek mythology, Chinese folklore, and African myths and legends, where we traditionally encounter mighty gods, dragons, ghosts, demons, and epic forces of nature. Fantasy seems to have typically merged the imagined with direct observations of our reality. While we may no longer be depicting quite so many omnipotent gods, we are still indulging in the imagined and tantalisingly out of reach.

As we enter the new year and strive for a less chaotic and devastating worldview, it feels fitting to showcase an alternative vision—an exhibition of artists imagining a land far far away.

Text and Curation by Sam Hanson