Futures

FUTURES is excited to present Serotonin!, a high-voltage group exhibition featuring painting, sculpture, photography and installation by Australian and American artists.

These bodies we live in are run by chemicals that ebb and flow of their own accord. What a nuisance they can be, but for sweet, sweet serotonin (and its twin dopamine). Jouissance, a swelling heart, a rupture, a sugar hit, a visual cacophony. Fuel, and salvation. Staged during Melbourne’s coldest winter in decades, this bouncy exhibition offers colourful respite to mid-winter doldrums, melancholia and all the other depressive states. But perhaps serotonin (like the colour yellow, too much of which can encourage violence btw) can take a darker turn. So happy it hurts!

Serotonin! traverses a minefield of its namesake’s states ­­– colour cacophonies; its medicinal form; a sublime sunrise; an object that witness sex; convivial connections; and the joy some get from gazing longingly at a stranger’s butthole via webcam. Louise Bourgeois once said “it is the ability to sublimate that makes an artist”. This show proposes art as a portal we can sublimate to. Maybe it’s a question of beauty? A beauty that embraces the sublime and negation – a slice to the eyeball, a step too far.

Exhibition review in The Age

Claire Lambe and Jake Preval appear courtesy of Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne
André Hemer appears courtesy of Yavuz Gallery, Sydney
Darren Sylvester appears courtesy of Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Neon Parc, Melbourne