Unti­tled Explo­sion #8LF, 2007 (Chro­mogenic print, 381 x 508 mm)

The images of explod­ing fuel from Geof­frey H. Short­’s exhi­bi­tion Towards Anoth­er (Big Bang) The­o­ry at {Suite} Gallery on Ori­en­tal Parade are imme­di­ate­ly evoca­tive to me of a num­ber of dif­fer­ent oth­er imageries, occur­ring in rough­ly this order:

  • of the US mil­i­tary napalm­ing bits of Viet­nam
  • of Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la napalm­ing bits of the Phillip­ines pre­tend­ing to be the US mil­i­tary napalm­ing bits of Viet­nam (for Apoc­a­lypse Now)
  • of the Iraqi mil­i­tary set­ting fire to Kuwaiti oil wells in Wern­er Her­zog’s doc­u­men­tary Lessons of Dark­ness
  • of fire-fight­ers from var­i­ous parts of the world try­ing to extin­guish and cap the burn­ing oil wells in Lessons of Dark­ness
  • of thou­sands of hectares of earth smoth­ered and choked by crude oil (Lessons of Dark­ness).

So, basi­cal­ly, invok­ing the visu­al­ly spec­tac­u­lar ‘hor­rors’ of war.

Short hired film indus­try spe­cial effects tech­ni­cians to cre­ate “big bangs” on the black sands of New Zealand’s west coast, using fos­sil fuel (with all its geo-polit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions) mixed with gun­pow­der (with its own his­to­ry of war, plots and dan­ger­ous enter­tain­ment) as an unpre­dictable, dra­mat­ic and mul­ti-lay­ered imag­ing mate­r­i­al. This work is an inter­ro­ga­tion of that mate­r­i­al, and of the effects of pre­sent­ing “ter­ri­ble objects” in an aes­thet­ic realm.

{Suite} Gallery writes about the work:

The inher­ent mys­tery and ulti­mate inevitabil­i­ty of death makes it a sta­ple sub­ject of con­tem­pla­tion in phi­los­o­phy and in art. Risk­ing death means both ter­ror and excite­ment, and the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry philoso­phers Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant sug­gest­ed that what­ev­er is ter­ri­fy­ing is also sub­lime.

Geof­frey H. Short­’s series towards anoth­er (big bang) the­o­ry is an explo­ration of risk, ter­ror, beau­ty and the sub­lime. The fuel explo­sion is part of the cin­e­mat­ic vocab­u­lary of spe­cial effects and as such is a sim­u­la­tion of ter­ror.

So, basi­cal­ly, war and war movies. Looks like we’re all on the same page then!

Unti­tled Explo­sion #2‑CN, 2009 (Chro­mogenic print, 381 x 508 mm)

I say:

The images are sim­ple, fas­ci­nat­ing and vis­cer­al­ly engag­ing, and I urge you to check them out in per­son. My only com­plaint is that some of them are pos­si­bly not big enough; I would rather see them all at a larg­er scale.

Mark Amery has writ­ten about the show on The Big Idea, and I think the piece also appeared in the Domin­ion Post.

Geof­frey H. Short lives in Auck­land, New Zealand. He grad­u­at­ed Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts with first class hon­ours from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land in 2010 and was award­ed a Senior Prize in Fine Arts. His work is includ­ed in the sur­vey exhi­bi­tion and book “reGen­er­a­tion² – tomor­row’s pho­tog­ra­phers today” pro­duced by the Musée d l’Elysée, Lau­sanne, Switzer­land and tour­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly.

Towards Anoth­er (Big Bang) The­o­ry runs at {Suite} Gallery until the 17th of July, 2011.

{Suite} Gallery, 108 Ori­en­tal Parade, Welling­ton.

Gallery open most days & by appoint­ment.

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it their web­site, email them, or con­tact the gallery through their handy web-form.