Funny how I'm always on the head of a longing arrow

Henrietta Fisher, Funny how I’m always on the head of a longing arrow, 2024, photograph. Courtesy of the artist.

Henrietta Fisher, Funny how I’m always on the head of a longing arrow, 2024, photograph. Courtesy of the artist.

now on
6 Dec 2024 – 1 Feb 2025

Henrietta Fisher

In Funny how I’m always on the head of a longing arrow, Henrietta Fisher presents an anthology of vignettes interrogating the interplay of bodies, technology and practices of communion. 

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Extending from Paul B. Preciado’s assertion that “screens [are] the new skin of the world” [1], Fisher explores screens as prosthetic extensions of the body—techno-sexual organs mediating our desires, interactions, and dissolving outlines. For Fisher, the screen emerges as a libidinal surface, an interface that blurs the boundaries between physicality and the digital, intimacy and isolation.

Through vignettes, loops and symbolic gestures, bodies—human, industrial and animal—transform and dissolve. These visual works resist fixed form, using footage of the artist’s own body—abstracted into omnipresence or employed to explore a girlified trope as a “psychic operation” [2] —interfacing flesh and machine, love and violence. Similarly, the inclusion of ‘lowly’ creatures, such as fish in hyper-artificial environments, highlights our shared exchange of matter and the reverence owed to all forms of life, however small or overlooked.

This exploration of communion challenges individualist boundaries, fostering connections not only with others but also with the so-called ‘natural’ world, refracted through the lens of hyper-saturated digital culture. The protean conditions of contemporary subjectivity emerge as desires warp and refract, as painting bleeds into video art, and as digital networks give rise to new spiritual longings and collectivist propositions.

By dissolving the self into technological and ecological entanglements, Fisher reimagines the screen as a space of both anguish and play. Here, the obsolete and the avant-garde collide—video editing effects become painterly tools, and hypervisibility becomes a meditation on exposure and reverence. Funny how I’m always on the head of a longing arrow asks: Can communion with the overlooked and the fragmented help us navigate the spaces between individualism and interconnected existence?

Fisher invites us to reimagine ourselves as porous, mutable, and profoundly interwoven with the world.


[1] Preciado, Paul B. An Apartment on Uranus. Translated by Charlotte Mandell, London, United Kingdom, Fitzcorraldo Editions, 2019.

[2] Chu, Andrea Long. Females. Verso Books, 2019.

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Henrietta Fisher is an artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara working primarily with video installation and other image, object and time-based media. Her work is concerned with contemporary psyche, libidinal resources and anthropocentrism. Informed by material exploration as metaphor, recurrent symbols and characters pertain to ideas of sensuality, dissolution and devolution, communion and surveillance. Fisher graduated from Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University in 2023 with a BFA first class honours. She collaborated with Dayle Palfreyman on the work Contingere for Three Approaches, Three Rooms at Gus Fisher Gallery in Tāmaki in October 2023. 

 

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Extraordinary Contact

Alexandra McFarlane, Blue Leaf Star Bound, 2024, oil on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

Alexandra McFarlane, Blue Leaf Star Bound, 2024, oil on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

now on
6 Dec 2024 – 1 Feb 2025

Alexandra McFarlane

In Extraordinary Contact, Alexandra McFarlane delves into the liminal space between belief and experience, exploring alien abduction narratives as a lens to examine trauma, memory, and the search for meaning. Anchored in her own childhood memory of a devastating house fire in Ōtautahi, the exhibition reflects on how extraordinary events shape our sense of self and reality.

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McFarlane’s fascination with UFOs and the supernatural began young, fueled by books like Into the Unknown [1], which chronicled eerie phenomena including a UFO sighting in her hometown. McFarlane recalls the visceral thrill of terror, an ‘addiction’ to the uncanny that parallels the emotional intensity described by alien abductees. Yet, for many claimants, alien encounters are deeply traumatic, marked by fear, violation, and lasting scars.

Rather than seeking to verify or debunk these accounts, McFarlane investigates the personhood of those who believe in their abductions. Through a blend of personal narrative, archival material, and speculative storytelling, she asks: What happens when the extraordinary touches an ordinary life? Do these experiences provide solace, escape, or a deeper reckoning with unresolved trauma?

Extraordinary Contact also critiques societal biases toward alien narratives, framing them as a complex interplay of psychological, cultural, and physical phenomena: advanced military technologies, trauma responses, or natural atmospheric anomalies refracted through the lens of imagination and fear. Still, McFarlane acknowledges the profound sincerity of these believers, whose experiences illuminate humanity’s existential longing for significance.

For some, the belief in extraterrestrial beings provides hope—an assurance that someone, somewhere, is watching over us. Others find comfort in the void, a temporary rupture where they become the center of a vast, unexplainable universe. McFarlane juxtaposes this with her own childhood fire, where familial support tethered her memory to tangible explanations. In contrast, abductees often live with unanswered questions, piecing together fractured memories in search of meaning.

Through Extraordinary Contact, McFarlane invites viewers to confront the liminality of belief and reality, posing the ultimate question: When our earthbound answers fail us, where do we look to find the truth?

I was a blue leaf this time, I think I will re as a green leaf, Star bound - Come by way of the stars go by way of the stars One on the right one on the left - Birth at Invercargill = "Come with me I will make you fishes of men

– Anonymous letter to Royal New Zealand Air Force, October 3, 1995, Ōtautahi.



[1]  Into the Unknown. Readers Digest. First Edition, 1981.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Alexandra McFarlane is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Primarily working as a painter and drawer, she makes use of colour and found materials to explore the horror and fantasy of everyday life. Recent exhibitions include Nina's Dance, Artspace Aotearoa; Tipping Rail, Artspace Aotearoa; Parakeets, Satchi&Satchi&Satchi; Dizzying Drive, Sanc Gallery; G-String Uniform, Satchi&Satchi&Satchi; and I think this is a womb, Studio One Toi Tu.

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