The Very Near Future

Andrew Frost

Reality and fiction are usually held at a comforting distance from one another but in Alex Davies’ The Very Near Future the artist has done everything he can to destabilise the fiction so that it bleeds into the real world.  Davies massive interconnected installation takes up the entirety of Artspace, a series of rooms that purport to be the Harvey Lebnitz Studio, a production house where The Hop Head Hatchet Man, a cheesy film noir, is being made.  On entry to the space  [via what appears to be the film studio’s front door] the visitor is greeted with an unattended security/reception desk. On a series of TV screens you catch glimpses of the production in full swing – but it soon seems that something very strange is taking place.

Davies’ masterful work is a new and much larger version of the piece he presented as part of ISEA2013, and in Artspace it benefits from  extended staging and a rambling but carefully planned series of rooms – editing studios, offices, tea room, a full studio with the set of a 1940s era apartment – all of which draw you into the fiction.  The highlight of the work is the experience of walking through it and although the knowing winks from the artist lets you know he knows you know, the uncanny effect of the work is undeniable – and profoundly spooky.

Until February 16

Artspace, Woolloomooloo

http://artspace.org.au

Pic: Alex Davies, The Very Near Future, 2014.