By Keith Armstrong

Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, Sasol Library

Exhibition closes:  Friday 11 August 2017

Gallery hours: Monday to Friday 08:30 – 16:30.

The Mesh is an interactive, experiential solo exhibition by Australian artist Keith Armstrong. The five artworks on exhibition each investigate how the ‘mesh' of environmental, social and cultural ecologies form our worlds, asking how might we re-imagine our place and actions within those networks as ‘refuturing’ (i.e. concerted actions that help increase time left in the future). 

Retrospective works are shown together with international premieres. These include a sculptural text-based work O Tswellang, arising from collaborations with 'change agents' in the informal townships around Bloemfontein. Another of the five works, the international premiere of Eremocene (Era of Loneliness), allows the viewer to interact with faintly glowing fibre optic forms that travel ethereally through a darkened tank accompanied by dynamic sounds, suggesting an naturalised/artificially intelligent form, ambiguously isolated at the edges of fluid consciousness. The exhibition also sees the re-development of innovative video installations such as Shifting Dusts, originally commissioned for the Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) London in 2006 and Seasonal. 

Audiences navigate these works non-linearly, encountering kinetic light works, telescopic tunnels of ethereal imagery and sound and gently pulsing, ambiguous surfaces. Overall The Mesh seeks to shine a light upon the silent, shadowy barriers of cultural misunderstanding that prevent us from re-inventing ourselves as a future-sustaining species.