Brodie Ellis, Ruth Höflich, Andrea Illés and Grace Marlow, Nadège Philippe-Janon, Laura Skerlj
16 November 2026 – 12 February, 2027
Opening celebration: Thursday 19 November, 5-7pm
Things still come into being, again and again. Visions intrude at the edge of consciousness, ecological forces unsettle falsely fixed ideas of temperature and the shape of coastlines, discourse gets pushed further beyond an axis of acceptability, actions curtailed are born anew in secret.
Within this is a whispering on the whirlwinds1, a myriad of forces that enmesh and entangle themselves. The forces are spectral. That is not to say they are ghosts, but that they exist and enact themselves on a continuum: one that oscillates between the phantom element, and that material element that absorbs or emits energy.
All this talk of energy (transference: one thing becoming another) conjures up a grid, our selves as one fiber optic thread tangled and enmeshed within some other. Signals transfer across this system (a waving flag, a radio wave and a secret listening practice) and at this point it might be fair to acknowledge that to go as far as finding the wiring in the whirlwind, might we find that everything is caught up within it? These are the limits, then. Boundaries: the electromagnetic fence to keep in is also the same mechanism for keeping out.
This exhibition brings together Masters and PhD students at the Victorian College of the Arts, within a field of forces that cannot be entirely separated, contained or disentangled.
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1 "I like to stand in the midst of the whirlwind, and show what’s out there and what’s denied… Our hard-wiring as human beings probably prevents us from knowing a great deal about what is real, and each language also sets limits. But every once in a while people experience breakthroughs." Susan Hiller
Image: Ruth Höflich, 5 Days in February, 2026, still image.