Ruth Höflich, To Feed your Oracle

• Ursula Cornelia de Leeuw

In the heritage listed mansion that is Linden New Art gallery a new exhibition from the Munich-born, now Melbourne-based, multidisciplinary artist Ruth Höflich is on show. Its title, To Feed your Oracle, gestures toward the mysticism of its forms, requiring an informed eye to sift through its contents and extract whatever prophecies they may tell.

The show begins in the front of the house, arranged around a centrally falling curtain that divides the room into two. Made from colour-blocked fabrics in royal purple, blue, black, white and stage-red, the curtain (Traveller, 2021) is also split in two parts so that objects may be glimpsed in the space between its folds. In this gap rests an aluminium tray standing on four coaster feet, implying the possibility of movement between the two sides. On the tray are a selection of archival pigment print photographs layered on top of one another, as if they were freshly pulled from a filing cabinet. These coaster-trays are repeated around the room with different images atop them and are individually titled: Table with green light (2021), Table with red light (2021) and Table with eyes to look through (2021). In the act of viewing, one is forced to stand over the work, peering down into its depths.