Future Girl & Tales from the Interior & Islands 'You and Me'

The Blue Oyster is pleased to present Anya Sinclair & Alan Ibell: Future Girl & Tales from the Interior and Markus Hofko: Islands 'You and Me – A Second and a Lifetime'. Hofko, Sinclair and Ibell explore the construction of imagined realities as a way to interrogate issues arising in everyday life, through the way belief systems, fears and desires are revealed in the content of fantasies. The exhibitions will open on Tuesday 16 June at 5:30pm and will run until Saturday 11 July.

Anya Sinclair's Future Girl is a sculptural rendering of sterile cyber-space, abstracted and distilled from nature, constructed by Future Girl a cyborg bishōjo (heroine) programmed to create immersive phantasmagorical landscapes. Future Girl aims to shape a private universe by consciously investing and indulging in her desire to escape into fantasy. By inviting viewers into her private world she references the shared consumption and creation of artificial virtual environments through mediums such as the Internet and multi-player computer games. Her work takes issue with the evolving sophistication of alternative realities that increasingly premise virtual experience over physical reality.

Alan Ibell's series of paintings Tales from the Interior depicts figures within sparse, empty dreamscapes that are beholden only to the realm of human thought. Ibell's paintings are intended to stimulate the viewer's unconscious mind and offer a dreamlike narrative for waking life. The characters themselves, with their pale skin and blurred features, seem to occupy a limbo space somewhere between life and death, awake and asleep, as they negotiate their often absurd situations. Ibell explores the merging of reality and fantasy; the familiar and uncanny; logical and irrational; waking life and the dream.

Markus Hofko's islands are a series of sculptures showing miniature scenes of life. Isolated chunks of earth, which look like they have been ripped from the planet's crust, hang suspended in space. The random group of inhabitants left floating on this debris, do their best to survive in these limited environs. Hofko's Islands visualise the inevitable limitations of our own subjective, social, physical and imaginative worlds. These tiny microcosms position the viewer as a superior being but ultimately helpless observer. Islands 'You and Me – A Second and a Lifetime' is supported by the Goethe Institute.

In association with Future Girl the Blue Oyster will be running the second in a series of educational workshops. This drawing workshop will work with students as they construct their own fantasy landscapes through various drawing techniques. Workshops will be held on Thurs 18, Tues 23, Thurs 25, Tues 30 of June and Thurs 2 July from 12:30pm. Participation is free and available to school groups from any year. Bookings are essential - email education@blueoyster.org.nz to reserve a time for your class.

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