NETFLIX AND DISINTEGRATE INTO NOTHING AND EVERYTHING (2024) continues McGibbon's exploration into multi-species futures through the world of Xenophon. This alter-imaginary is populated by Xenothorpians, a fluid species that commune and mutate with living and non-living entities to adapt to the Anthropocene. Their
hybridisations provide a backdrop from which new stories emerge- a satirical approach to the problem of humans.
The exhibition is Act 1 of a Xenothorpian Romance: Beyond the Species and the Sexual, told in three acts.
The exhibition activates this Xenothorpian, multi-species love story and invites the audience to engage in intimate relations, beyond the species and the sexual. The work is driven by the question of queer multispecies desire, can loving beyond protocol result in more relational choices that disrupt human-centred practices in the garden?
To re-think garden relations this love story broadens sexuality to include how we inhabit and interact. The project positions the unkempt; weeds, hedgerows, and meadows as queer sites of desire where gender-bending cohabitors embrace diversity and fluidity, and rhizomes disrupt normative reproduction. Counter to this are the manicured, weeded, overgrazed, cropped sites controlled & depleted by human desire.
The narrative evolved from the artist's recent inquiry into pesticides, where she became Xenothorpian and merged with Japanese knotweed in the garden. As the story unfolds, McGibbon continues to mutate with the vegetal and develop a romance beyond species-centric relations, entering a polyamorous relationship with her partner and the garden.
The work explores the critical and creative potential of material storytelling to imbue narrative and stimulate new thinking. Elements of the installation are cast with natural materials from the artist's sea edge garden. These compostable transformations function as a potential bridge & physical manifestation of this speculative project; perpetually mutating, absorbing and disintegrating, blurring the boundaries between the garden actors and ultimately returning to the earth.
This multi-species wooing scenario engages with ecology, speculative vegetation, permaculture and the absurdness of human dating culture to playfully draw connections between entangled garden actors. The day's eye, commonly known as the daisy, opens its petals to the sun to seduce pollinators with its sweet aroma, while humans gaze at screens to seek copulation. The Gunnera Manicata brings 'big dick energy' with their magnificent seek pods and invasive rhizomes, while men pose with fish to display their masculinity.
hybridisations provide a backdrop from which new stories emerge- a satirical approach to the problem of humans.
The exhibition is Act 1 of a Xenothorpian Romance: Beyond the Species and the Sexual, told in three acts.
The exhibition activates this Xenothorpian, multi-species love story and invites the audience to engage in intimate relations, beyond the species and the sexual. The work is driven by the question of queer multispecies desire, can loving beyond protocol result in more relational choices that disrupt human-centred practices in the garden?
To re-think garden relations this love story broadens sexuality to include how we inhabit and interact. The project positions the unkempt; weeds, hedgerows, and meadows as queer sites of desire where gender-bending cohabitors embrace diversity and fluidity, and rhizomes disrupt normative reproduction. Counter to this are the manicured, weeded, overgrazed, cropped sites controlled & depleted by human desire.
The narrative evolved from the artist's recent inquiry into pesticides, where she became Xenothorpian and merged with Japanese knotweed in the garden. As the story unfolds, McGibbon continues to mutate with the vegetal and develop a romance beyond species-centric relations, entering a polyamorous relationship with her partner and the garden.
The work explores the critical and creative potential of material storytelling to imbue narrative and stimulate new thinking. Elements of the installation are cast with natural materials from the artist's sea edge garden. These compostable transformations function as a potential bridge & physical manifestation of this speculative project; perpetually mutating, absorbing and disintegrating, blurring the boundaries between the garden actors and ultimately returning to the earth.
This multi-species wooing scenario engages with ecology, speculative vegetation, permaculture and the absurdness of human dating culture to playfully draw connections between entangled garden actors. The day's eye, commonly known as the daisy, opens its petals to the sun to seduce pollinators with its sweet aroma, while humans gaze at screens to seek copulation. The Gunnera Manicata brings 'big dick energy' with their magnificent seek pods and invasive rhizomes, while men pose with fish to display their masculinity.
