27 October 23

27 October – 5 November 2023
Private view: Friday, 27 October 6-9pm
Opening Hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 12-6pm

Are archetypes the fundamental essence of things? Do they represent something deeper that exists beyond our perception? Or are archetypes simply symbolic attempts to make things relatable? Are archetypal roles like ‘hero,’ ‘mother,’ and ‘introvert’ just narrow human constructs that don’t accurately capture the complexity of reality?

Perhaps archetypes serve as reference points in an infinite web of possibilities for understanding relationships. Do they take shape from a collective consciousness, manifesting individually and perceived differently, or are they too simplistic when compared to the intricacies of human existence? The things people like you buy, the cultural influences in your daily life – from clothing and food choices to beliefs and online identities – are all at once woven into your everyday existence and distinct qualities in their own right.

Can archetypes bend to us rather than us to them? Perhaps modern, and more flippant archetypes could develop, twist, and break old paradigms, or they may just be old ones with new faces.

Alfred Worrall – alfredworrall.com @__aelfraed__
Alfred’s work is currently based around eBay, finding curious objects, reflections of sellers, interestingly photographed objects and incidental backgrounds that offer voyeuristic views of people’s interiors; homes, shops and warehouses. The types of objects and lives seen obliquely are sometimes quintessential examples of periods of time, styles and fashions. Also, while searching eBay, an algorithmic type-casting, or essence extraction, happens where you, yourself, become an archetype, i.e. ‘someone like you’.

Eva Duerden – @eva.duerden
Eva is engaged in the creating and the exercising of tools and props, and understanding how we activate them as short hands, for what we hope to project of our internal world. Whether these objects are keys on a belt, shoes that make a distinctive sound, or our specific jacket, they work to communicate us through the associations and importance that we imbue them with. Signifiers that allow us to perform the ‘character’, paraphernalia that is a ‘tell’ to how we want to assert ourselves, or, what archetypes resonate with us.

Lijin Zhu – @zh.u.zhu
Lijin’s works attempt to ask about the inertia structure that is hidden in everyday details, and she substitutes the invisible direction of inertia into an image, the wind, letting this image shuttle between reality and conception. She uses video and installations to present the wind’s manifest form, power, trajectory, and so on, dialectically reflecting on the conditions under which directionality arises and the archetypes through which mutual identity occurs.

Lucy Robson – @lucymary__robson
Lucy’s work is interested in the competing and emerging definitions of femininity of our time. She draws on traditional painting methods, and filmic compositional devices, to explore archetypal female constructs, as shaped by popular culture compounded by social media.
Her work wishes to reclaim the frivolity and self-indulgence long-since associated with girlhood, without rushing to subvert or transform. The freeze-frame style of depiction, coupled with the dramatic crop, brings the viewer sharply to the moment. The motifs and hands amplify her gesture, and resist the subject’s assigned place as ‘bearer of meaning.’

Vincent Matuschka – vincentmatuschka.com @vincent.matuschka
Vincent is a mixed media artist. His works are new narratives about dismantling the known and challenging the unknown. All of this is mostly paired with humour and play. Vincent believes that the known is not inspiring, it is the unknown that changes the thinking. His work explores different ways of challenging awareness and consciousness in our behaviour and structures in our world. Archetypes can be instrumentalized to play with