I am pleased to share some words about my latest project FEVER DREAMS, which was part of this year’s Cairns Festival. It was so exciting being included in the Festival programme, and for those of you who missed it, here is a great review written by my husband Bruce. Enjoy!

“At the centre of this year’s Cairns Festival visual arts program is Fever Dreams; an immersive, sensory exploration of the dreams we’re sold and the price we continue to pay. Presented by Cairns Regional Council, local artists Hans Ahwang, Jamie Cole, India Collins and Melania Jack have cleverly disguised the sinister with colour, fabric, textiles, music and multimedia, to present a show that delivers the dream but also the fever.

Let’s dream together…

Entering from the eastern side of Tank 4, local urban pop artist Jamie Cole has created a world of fun with “Club Tropicana”. His work greets you with a very familiar song lyric, and before you know it, you’re hearing it on high rotation in your head, You’re then taken to a space designed for participation. Neon signs, bright pop art pieces, lavish cocktails in jewellery store showcases, beach balls and babes, triggering memories of early MTV and decadent vacations in the “super resorts” of the 80s. Each wall in the room is begging for a selfie. It’s a feast for the eyes served up on a candy-coloured platter. All the while however, you’re interrupted by the relentless chime of someone’s mobile phone camera and the grinding sound of a leaf blower. “Quiet please, I’m trying to live my best life!”

Is this starting to sound familiar…?

What you’re hearing is multimedia and performance artist Melania Jack’s “Out of Office, still performing”. A glamorous digital installation that saturates the viewer with sounds and high res digital images of an Influencer curating their vacation on social media.

Shown to us on an iPhone screen in the foreground, you see all the glamour and stylized pouting you could ever dream of. Is there nothing this Babes can’t do? But behind this slick veil, a very different story is unfolding. All the trappings of the perfect vacation are falling apart before our eyes. Pool toys and palm trees, once proud and absolute, are deflating and spoiling everything. Where’s that leaf blower when you need it?

The craziness continues in India Collins’ “Temple of False Gods” just next door. In this powerful installation Collins wants us to ask the question, what are we worshipping? Constructed as a shrine to the discarded, Collins’ work challenges every impulse purchase or coveted beauty product we’ve just had to have. Trophies and toys once idolized, are woven with abandoned objects and deserted fast fashion, into a tower of rampant consumption. Where and when will the worship end? When will our hunger be satisfied, and what will be left?

Mua Island born artist Hans Ahwang continues the narrative with his shield-like assemblage outside the Temple. Made from chicken wire, plastic bottles, shells and feathers, and entitled “Lei Sculpture”, Ahwang’s work presents the beautiful lei body adornment from the Torres Strait Islands, as a jarring, unwearable coat, an uncomfortable reminder of the damage caused by human intervention on the natural world.”

Fever Dreams was a wild ride from start to finish. Colourful, exciting, challenging and disturbing. Everything you’d want in an art show and more. Watch this space for the next exciting project… Jamie x