Cover image of the review
Title image: Sam Jinks, *Untitled (babies)*, 2012, Silicone, pigment, resin and human hair, 36 x 36 x 18 cm. Courtesy the artist and Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney.

Fictitious Realities


12 Aug 2017
1 Jul - 3 Sep 2017

Fictitious Realities, the group exhibition of nine artists - Daniel Agdag, Tom Arthur, Simon Finn, Aki Inomata, Richard Giblett, Sam Jinks, Colin Suggett, Cyrus Tang, and Liu Zhuoquan – is on show at 'the Gallery at BACC' (its slightly abbreviated moniker) until 3 September. Nestled within the unsuspecting affluence of the City of Bayside, the Gallery at Bayside Arts and Culture Centre plays host to an exhibition whereby curator Robert Lindsay has executed a collective exercise in imaginative escapism.

There is a sometimes oneiric, at other times deceptive, and consistently subjective sense in Fictitious Realities. The title’s thematically combined, but apparently opposed, terms offer respite to the grim task of sense-making in the contemporary media cycle. 'Fiction' as something imagined (pejoratively, it is 'false') that is rendered beautiful or rearticulated poetically, and 'Reality' as the materialisation of truth or fact. And yet we know too well that 'truth' has also become a highly subjective term - perhaps essentially fictive itself - and thus art can be seen to embody all kinds of truths, depending on the position of the viewer. Lindsay refers directly to this notion of plural truths by including artworks that encourage the viewers to explore the context of each work, which precludes a singular imaginative interpretation of each.

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