Mish Meijers has long toyed with the threshold of the screen and the stage, her command of the uncanny subverting the audience’s gaze and prompting the self-conscious realisation that we too are performers in the gallery. The ‘Abacus Wars’ is no exception, exploding its own inescapable present; global pandemic, fake news, nuclear fallout, the 2020 zoom-apocalypse death of mass gatherings, live theatre, and interstellar travel for artists and their audiences… the bead-clicking-background-countdown to climate catastrophe… but equally these works are buoyant and uncapturable; they document resilience, resistance and the solidarity of the bodies that refuse reduction to the body politic.
Mish Meijers, Peachy keen fever dream (Mexico), 2020, oil on reverse glass (Hinterglasmalerei), Tasmanian oak frame, acrylic and mixed media on paper, 100 x 130 x 4cm. Courtesy the artist and Bett Gallery, Tasmania
Bett Gallery
20 November to 12 December 2020
Tasmania
