INNER REFUGE

INNER REFUGE BLACKARTPROJECTS & LITTLEWHITEHEAD PRESENT

B L A C K

INNER REFUGE Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts 26 Acland Street St Kilda, Australia 16 May - 22 June, 2014

INNER REFUGE For their most recent work, littlewhitehead have drawn inspiration from a series of public information announcements issued by the British Government during the Cold War. The information issued in print and film gave instructions on what the public should do to protect themselves in the event of a nuclear attack. As well as instructing what to do in the aftermath of an attack, it also gave advice on measures one could take to prepare their home to provide the most efficient shelter from radiation fallout. littlewhitehead’s interest in these unnerving public announcements continues their examination into the spectacle of nothing. The Cold War was a war of deterrence. There wasn’t the action and violence of previous wars. These public information broadcasts were propaganda, ways of reminding the public they were at risk from an invisible threat: both the invisible war and threat of nuclear fallout. Both these invisible threats have the potential to obliterate, yet the government advice on protection appears to be an absurd afterthought against such a force. In retrospect, it becomes apparent that the intent of the broadcasts was not to inform or to protect but rather an institutional mechanism to disseminate fear.

The legacy of such public broadcasts is peculiar: they still appear simultaneously chilling, absurd, blackly comic and strangely banal.

Their sentiments were echoed in British television fiction at the time, most notably in Raymond Brigg’s ‘When the Wind Blows’ and the 1984 BBC docudrama ‘Threads’. The circulation of audience responses to these mediations, through dialogue and public discourse, not only helped socially construct the apparent nuclear threat but consequently disseminated anxiety inspiring fear.

Although this work is influenced by a definite period of British history, it is more a continuation into littlewhitehead’s twisted interest in social anxieties. Inner Refuge is a blackly comic examination on the invisible fears that plague an individual and their inability to do anything about them.

Inner Refuge (2014) plaster, wood, screws, wire, tape, silicon rubber, synthetic hair, pins, shoes, socks, slacks, white shirt, sweater, school desk, chair, leather satchel, pencil, school notebook, found drawings, pencil

littlewhitehead Inner Refuge (2014) 130 x 72 x 69 cm

littlewhitehead Inner Refuge (detail) 130 x 72 x 69 cm

littlewhitehead Inner Refuge (detail) 130 x 72 x 69 cm

littlewhitehead Inner Refuge (detail) 130 x 72 x 69 cm

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