It could be stated that many of the works of This World & Nearer Ones seem enveloped in a pall of darkness, to be read either as a persistence of the irrational and the obscure or a reflection of the spirit of the age. It was the Impressionists that chose to employ dark mirrors, in order to refresh their eyes and see color anew; to stare into dark glass before turning back again to the world. This, then, is the exhibition as dark mirror. It seeks, through materially slight and ephemeral means, to present works that eschew the spectacular and absolute and, employing more than a little dark humour, invite open speculation. Avoiding easy succour—there is no vividly coloured, lime green, depression-era glass by which to forget oneself—the artists present a world in which certainty and the future are in question. For certainty without critical thought has been the crowning tragedy of the age. What we are being asked to consider is the sureness of our beliefs, from the invocation of spirits both scientific and ritually summoned; fictional architecture and neo-liberal urban planning; the ghosts of counterculture and culturally-sanctioned agit-prop to the spoken testimony of army veterans and science fiction narratives. It, as with the island, is in a state of becoming, caught between worlds and open to all, a moment to consider without fixity the times in which we live.

Mark Beasley, May, 2009