METRO ARTS, 3 - 22 DECEMBER 2022 

PRESENTED BY METRO ARTS & FIRSTDRAFT 

Popular culture uses speculative science fiction, fantasy and horror as a means to both ferment, and ignore, mounting eschatological terror. Within the context of imminent global catastrophe, speculation around plant consciousness and monstrous plants, as manifested in both philosophy and popular culture, is a site of productive tension concerning the vegetal, the more-than-human, and the future. I am drawn to the unreal, unimaginable, the weird and eerie, queerness, and provocative ideas that emerge from, making experimental investigations of other possible worlds to  describe these tensions.  

While mining the polyvalent discourse of retro speculative science fiction as a site of research, I am frequently encountering the vegetal as a signifier of what has been and what is to come. Weeds, or rather, plants allegedly out of place, have an immutable loquacity in the knowledge they hold of the capitalocene, and tell clairvoyant, veracious narratives of where we are headed.  

Materials: Found objects, H2O, Nutrient, UV light,  Water Hyacinth, Salvinia, Moss, Various  incidental weeds, Earthenware, Hemp fibre 

FIRSTDRAFT X METRO ARTS

Betty Russ is the first artist selected to  receive support through the Firstdraft  × Metro Arts Program, a two-year  reciprocal partnership creating  investment in the production and  presentation of new work by artists  from regional NSW and QLD. After  Betty Russ’s premiere at Metro Arts the  work will then be presented at Firstdraft  in February 2023. In 2023, a project  by a regional Queensland artist will  be presented at both Metro Arts and  Firstdraft. 

Images captured by Louis Lim