MADA Curators-in-Residence Isabella Hone-Saunders and Paul Boyé.

Exhibition one featuring:

Dani Marti,
Holly Childs + Gediminas Žygus,
Joshua Petherick,
Polly Borland,
Rory Pilgrim,
Susan Norrie,
Wendy Hubert.

This project takes place across this continent, on unceded sovereign Country, under skies and along waterways. We, the curators, acknowledge the nations of these lands: on Whadjuk boodja, the people of the Noongar nation; on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong lands, the people of the Eastern Kulin nations. Our respects are placed with the Elders, past and present.

‘Hope was never for the hopeless. It was always the stuff of fairy tales and fables, which were reserved exclusively for white people and, occasionally, those respectable ethnics.’ – Chelsea Watego

    Watego, Chelsea. Chapter 6: Fuck Hope, Another Day in the Colony. 2021, 189-190.

How does hope confront the denial of the future? The ‘inter-narrative’ functions here as a navigational tool for approaching hope, a virtual idea that floats and haunts above us in the everyday of crisis. As a methodology, the inter-narrative refuses to be flattened into a single story; instead, it creates an arrangement of materially and geographically distinct experiences that act as anchors. This intentional commitment drives the formation of the many inter-narratives within this exhibition: human and non-human stories of tender dependence, visual parallels of environmental crisis, extractivism, and utopia.

In a void of footholds, hope confronts the denial of the future. Whether foreclosed by climate collapse, monstrous capitalism, or the erasure of marginalised life, hope cannot be a speculative investment in a ‘later’ that may never arrive. In this exhibition, hope is active because it is foundational; it is the infrastructure of resistance that allows us to act despite the lack of a guaranteed outcome. If capitalism denies us a future, hope responds by reclaiming the integrity of the now.

By disrupting system breakdown through a constellation of images, people, and symbols, we attempt to collapse the distance between art and solidarity. When we speak of building catastrophe resistance, we are speaking of the way we work together as curators and artists. This is a commitment to a ‘near horizon’ where the work is the sustenance. We offer these inter-narratives not as a promised solution, but as a disciplined methodology for navigating the everyday of crisis.


Our thanks and gratitude to:

Melanie Flynn and MADA for the opportunity and space and to the broader MADA team; Natalie McCarthy and Jonathan Kimberly at Juluwarlu Art Group, Emma Neale, Zoe Priest and Simon McGlinn of the Monash University Art Collection team; Kate McHugh at Auspicious Arts; Hannah Mathews, Robert Cook, Darren Jorgensen, Jeremy Eaton, Charlotte Day, Stephanie Berlangieri for letters of support; Nicholas Mangan for his generous loan of the Whole Earth Catalog, Simon Gardam / Stray Pages for the printing of this publication; Dennis Grauel for his attentive and collaborative design of this publication and other exhibition ephemera; Audrey Jo Pfister for the hopium in the form of a deeply engaged catalogue essay; and to all the artists for their conversations, encouragement and collaboration.

Read the exhibition catalogue here, including ‘The Comet’ essay by
Audrey Jo Pfister.

Installation documentation, Andrew Curtis.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.