The Green Dream was shown as part of Gotham Studios 35 year group exhibition, celebrating over three decades of studio practice in Perth, the exhibition was held at Janet Holmes a Court Gallery in the Pickle District in November 2021.
The Green Dream is an installation informed by whaling histories, those real, imagined, speculated and haunting. Pentobarbitone also known as ‘The Green Dream’ is commonly known to be the most humane way to euthanise beached whales. This installation considers other connotations of sedation and The Green Dream; dreams of money, dreams of prosperity and luxury, dreams of a greener planet, dreams of a green new deal, dreams of Greenpeace, ‘you got green on your mind, I can see it in your eyes’. The Green Dream reflects on how the history of whaling and the extraction of resource was indeed an industry of prosperity, but one that nearly wiped out entire populations of whales. An industry with very little regard for the humanity of the ways in which we did so now offers an injection of green, synthetic liquid to allow these gentle giants to drift off peacefully. The Green Dream asks you, what is the cost of this desire for prosperity, for progress, for success, and what washes up ashore as a result ?
The Green Dream is an agar jelly which contains Krill Oil, a $100 aud note and sweat.
Over the course of the exhibition, the agar jelly transformed through airborne particles from dust, spit and sweat; creating a mouldy and potentially deadly substrate which needed to be disposed of before the open to the public artist talks due to health and safety reasons.
The work was acquired by a private collector for $100 and they received the $100 which was carefully extracted from the mouldy jelly.
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