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Sik (2025)

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Two channel video, duration: 6,19. Stills from digital video.

Exhibition: 4 July -17 August 2025 at Next Wave, Brunswick Mechanics Institute for Winter Windows Series

Sik [pronounced seek] is a two channel video work grappling with the polluting forces of an increasingly disembodied, virtual world and the consequences of our delusions on our connection to the planet.

 

Sik is a Meriam (Eastern Torres Strait) word describing the foam that forms between the exposed sand and the waves. We are bubbling at the interface of technological, cultural, environmental and spiritual change and we are creating new folklores.

 

In the first video, the figure wears a VR headset which becomes a ceremonial headdress, adorned with plastics, natural fibres and dyed grasses. The human eyes of the figure are rendered useless with the virtual eyes on the headset becoming the all seeing, all knowing ones. 

 

In the second video, the ocean fades into a liminal, virtual space. The figures are walking but they form no footsteps, their presence signalling the collapse between the natural/artificial, savage/civilised, physical/metaphysical, virtual/real.

 

Being of mixed heritage from coastal places in South Asia, Torres Strait Islands and the Caribbean, the ocean is a force that integrates the apparent disparate parts of my lineage, transforming separateness into spiritual wholeness. The ocean signifies wholeness and yet, our reliance on the ocean beds to power our mechanistic world (cables), and as a dumping ground, compromises the delicate health and balance of the sea.

 

Sik is a starting point for a larger artistic exploration on our reliance on the oceans for our connectivity in a virtual, physical and metaphysical sense. 

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Installation view: Next Wave, Brunswick Mechanics Institute. Photo Credit: Tom Noble

© 2025 by Axel Garay 
 

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