Disappearing

Curated by Carol Bett, Gerard Castles and Pete Hay

Bett Gallery, nipaluna/Hobart

12 March - 3 April 2021

Disappearing

Disappearing : to cease to be seen; vanish from sight; to cease to exist or be known; pass away; end gradually.

In our islands, their past, the land, seas, the movement of air, its peoples, the cadence of life and in the place itself is something unfathomably beautiful. You sense it as much as see it. It’s about connection and time not the here and now. It’s a secret that has been closely held, cherished, sustaining our soul.

Entwined with that secret has been a hope that one day Tasmania would be recognised, acknowledged and able to stand on its own two feet. This has been elusive but now we are told that perhaps it is so close as to be reckoned by the beads on the accountant’s abacus.

Then again, perhaps not. Is the price we are paying a disappearing, a disappearing of the very stuff that sustains us? Or, is it a more complex story, shedding a skin as part of the inexorable march of renewal?

Disappearing.

Work documentation by Jack Bett