This show has been curated by Chris Thompson :
Victoria Adam Ellie Barrett Billy Crosby
Sessa Englund Stuart Middleton Chris Thompson
In European folklore, a Changeling is a fairy child, left by its otherworldly progenitors to mimic the human child they had stolen, exploiting the parents for one reason or another. In Star Trek, the Changeling is a curmudgeonly Constable called Odo, ready to assume the guise of any inanimate object in order to catch the plucky Quark, whilst struggling with his identity as a liquid in a world of solids and their prejudices.
But what’s a trope?
The well-established, predictable laugh in a rom-com, the baggy jeans of feral youth, the Hieroglyphs in the Pharaoh’s Pyramid. A trope is an established, repeating element within a given cultural context. More interestingly though, tropes are the method by which identity is constructed and the means by which culture is structured and navigated.
Look at the shelves in Aldi the next time you’re in.
Yet the power we invest in our tropes means they can dictate to us instead of define. Folklore provided the tools to keep the monsters at bay, but what about within our current cultural paradigm, where objects have secretly gained runaway agency, vitality and influence, proliferating within our habits, ignorance and culture of stuff? When identity is signified by a series of adopted signs, objects or languages then you have a recipe for a Changeling- the trope object with agency gained through a cycle of use.
This show seeks to tackle this issue, by exploiting the agency of its surroundings. The fetish object is the perfect example of a trope object that’s gained too much damn power, but by no means is the only one.
This show puts together the work of artists who operate within an understanding of this agency. Either by exploitation, exposure or usurpation they aim to offer a re-calibratory experience for our relationship with our inanimate friends, in the same way that tales of fairy children provided the tools for keeping the creatures at bay.
Boiling them alive worked quite well, it has to be said.
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