“It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”

Myths are stories; considered and condensed, with details and perspectives omitted by a mythmaker. The ability of myth as a tool is that it can distort and change what an image or phrase signifies. It erases the complexities of human actions to create worlds without contradiction.

Roland Boer writes in 'The Robbery of Language' that the crafting of “a world without contradiction” is an undeniable acknowledgement of the undercurrent of oppositional perspectives erased in favour of a singular vision. Boer posits that within myth there are opportunities for using counter-myth as a means to resist the erasure of other perspectives.

Myth & Signification invites four artists to approach myth and counter-myth as building blocks for crafting oppositional worlds, to contest the creation of a world without contradiction and resist the homogenisation of perspectives.

Astrid Elouise Bell is pulled towards the subjects for her triptych of paintings. Her considered practice of rummaging and reflection studies subjects with their own myths. Employing painting as a tool for expanding the myth of each subject in a new direction, Bell multiplies the mythology of her subjects with each brushstroke.

Sydney Jarrett’s work also engages with ideas of furthering mythologies. Jarrett’s installation references Jordy Rosenberg’s Confession of the Fox and explores how one can trace the creation of myth through archival histories while also extending upon stories that can serve as vehicles for truth.

Harrison Rae’s objects continues his research into the myth of John Busby. Rae’s work contests the quiet reverence placed upon Busby and the erasure of what was forced upon prisoners and labourers working on Busby’s Bore.

Nic Narapiromkwan Foo's video work documents the artist praying at the site of Kits on River Road. The documentation is a means to consolidate the demolished restaurant as its own myth and serves as a reminder of myths’ relationship with ritual and memory.

Together these works craft their own world of contradictions through myth and counter-myth. A world resisting the homogenisation of perspectives, the gendering of bodies, and the exploitation of land and labour.

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Astrid Elouise Bell is a painter, writer and general rummager who lives and works between the lands of the Dharawal and Gadigal people. Her practice surrounds things that elude our grasp and the sites and stories that bring us to our work and each other. Always attempting to find ritual in routine, collective in the familial and histories within the object. She likes collecting, making, and talking; looking for the phenomena of the everyday that is obscured by habit.

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Sydney Jarrett is a sculptor working on Gadigal land. His practice explores the semiotics & structures of regulatory bodies and systems of control. He is materially engaged in practices of loitering and gestures of refusal.

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Harrison Rae is an artist and musician working on Gadigal land. His practice reflects upon the poetics of ordinary objects and histories, approaching storytelling through mixed media and installation.

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Nic Narapiromkwan Foo is an artist and writer eating and conversing on Gadigal land. Having grown up in her parents’ suburban-Australian Thai restaurant, she thinks about boundaries and thresholds and how cooking and eating may be used to negotiate them. As someone who speaks Thai but cannot read or write it, her practice centres oral histories, learning through ritual, and collaborating with family.