Beau Emmett
09.06.2024
Haydens is pleased
to present Thin Green Mist, Small Grey Stain by Beau Emmett, an offsite
project at Cache, 3/46 Little La Trobe Street. The exhibition offers a
selection of new sculptural works and a framed jigsaw puzzle, combining
elements of mysticism and the occult. Together, these works activate the site
of Edmond and Corrigan’s library, as though the forgotten books have taken on a
life of their own.
Framed in anodized aluminium reminiscent of movie poster frames, a puzzle of the 1978 edition of Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber depicts the young Sally Field, staring glassy eyed into the distance. The puzzle is missing sixteen pieces, symbolic of the multiple personalities trapped within poor Sybil, instead replaced by oozing pearlescent ectoplasm.
Towards the floor lies a stack of archive boxes and several abandoned books. A copy of Nostradamus 1: Countdown to Apocalypsepublished in 1986 magically levitates, silently spinning around. His glowing, cosmic head blasts laser beams directly towards us from 450 years in the past. An illustration of another other grey-haired visionary, Carl Jung, peers back under raised glasses on the cover of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and another floating head of the teenage psychic Mathew Manning explains his connection to the paranormal in The Link.
Sprouting atop of a triangular mirrored plinth is an intricately formed steel rose, shielded by three copies of The Grand Tour: The Closed Faith, a book covering the ‘the greatest architectural achievements of all time.’ The content of the book is focused on places of worship, such as the Cathedrals of Monreale in Sicily, Santiago di Compostela in Spain, and Aachen in Germany, while the rose references the private inner sanctum of esoteric Swiss UFO cult The Order of the Solar Temple, active in the 1990’s.
Chrome, the largest work in the exhibition, is a serpentine, twisting metallic conduit holding two transparent egg-like forms that contain soil from Roswell USA, frozen within the shell like a galaxy exploding outward. The title of the work is a direct nod to the seminal gay science fiction novel of the same name, written by George Nader. Written during the emergence of the AIDS epidemic, there was a proliferation of accounts of anal probing during alleged alien abductions in the United States.
Bringing these works together within the library of Edmond and Corrigan conjures forth a portrait of an individual obsessed with the paranormal. Someone possessed with a desire to learn that which is beyond our understanding.
Framed in anodized aluminium reminiscent of movie poster frames, a puzzle of the 1978 edition of Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber depicts the young Sally Field, staring glassy eyed into the distance. The puzzle is missing sixteen pieces, symbolic of the multiple personalities trapped within poor Sybil, instead replaced by oozing pearlescent ectoplasm.
Towards the floor lies a stack of archive boxes and several abandoned books. A copy of Nostradamus 1: Countdown to Apocalypsepublished in 1986 magically levitates, silently spinning around. His glowing, cosmic head blasts laser beams directly towards us from 450 years in the past. An illustration of another other grey-haired visionary, Carl Jung, peers back under raised glasses on the cover of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and another floating head of the teenage psychic Mathew Manning explains his connection to the paranormal in The Link.
Sprouting atop of a triangular mirrored plinth is an intricately formed steel rose, shielded by three copies of The Grand Tour: The Closed Faith, a book covering the ‘the greatest architectural achievements of all time.’ The content of the book is focused on places of worship, such as the Cathedrals of Monreale in Sicily, Santiago di Compostela in Spain, and Aachen in Germany, while the rose references the private inner sanctum of esoteric Swiss UFO cult The Order of the Solar Temple, active in the 1990’s.
Chrome, the largest work in the exhibition, is a serpentine, twisting metallic conduit holding two transparent egg-like forms that contain soil from Roswell USA, frozen within the shell like a galaxy exploding outward. The title of the work is a direct nod to the seminal gay science fiction novel of the same name, written by George Nader. Written during the emergence of the AIDS epidemic, there was a proliferation of accounts of anal probing during alleged alien abductions in the United States.
Bringing these works together within the library of Edmond and Corrigan conjures forth a portrait of an individual obsessed with the paranormal. Someone possessed with a desire to learn that which is beyond our understanding.
Beau Emmett was born in 1977 and lives and works in Naarm, Melbourne Australia. He is an honours graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts and works as an artist, lecturer, technician and hairdresser.
Beau is a multimedia artist with a focus on sculpture, installation and photography. He approaches his practice as a site for the creation of sculptural compositions, tracing a relationship between image, object and performance. Common motifs in his work involve mythology, psychology, catastrophism, the occult, and pseudoscience.
Beau is currently undertaking a Masters of Fine Art (Research) at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.
