In Living Colour

2019
6 Viewmaster reels and devices.
Dimensions variable.
GI Jane/Space Oddity (edition of 2 + AP)
Mulan/Gallipoli (edition of 2 + AP)
Joan of Arc/Che Guevara (edition of 2 + AP)

Install images, Viewmaster reel images.

Death in pop culture is dramatic, heroic, and most of all, purposeful. The heroes die for a cause, and they look good doing it.

In Living Colour, saw the creation of Viewmaster reels telling ridiculous, melodramatic seven-frame narratives of my own death through mashed up pop culture, critiquing the heroic representation of death in media. In Living Colour plays with the difficulty of imagining your own death in a society where dying is either invisible or spectacular.

You know the scenes. You’ve seen them a thousand times.

In Mulan/Gallipoli, it’s the crossdressing woman soldier who falls in love in secret, the bullet while running into battle. In Joan of Arc/Che Guevara, it’s the rousing speeches, the fire licking the stake. In GI Jane/Space Oddity, it’s the gruelling training, the slow float through the void.

In a surreal cinema, a screen plays an endless empty tape reel. Take a seat, choose a story. No matter how many times you practice dying, it never seems to get any easier to imagine.

Additional modelling and assistance by: Ry Wilkin, Klari Agar, Roderick Cairns and Mike Greaney.