Psychedelic Centrelink 2024
glazed stoneware and gold lustre
In Psychedelic Centrelink, Emily Hunt reimagines the ‘paranoid architecture’ of the job centre as a citadel overrun by benevolent spirit guides. Here, job hunting is reconceived as an ‘unmaterialistic’ pursuit that can ‘facilitate a spiritual awakening’. Hunt also gestures to the social stigma associated with being jobless in Australia, where the unemployed are sometimes demonised as ‘dole bludgers’.
Hunt’s envisaged Centrelink takeover was inspired by the writings of anarchist American author and poet Peter Lamborn Wilson (1945–2022), who advocated for temporary occupations of private spaces called ‘temporary autonomous zones’. The dollhouse format of this ceramic sculpture is a reference to Philip K Dick’s 1964 science fiction book The three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, in which miniature playsets known as Perky Pat layouts were used by colonists to escape their dismal reality on Mars. The title of Dick’s trilogy VALIS is also emblazoned on one of the spirit guide’s cloaks.
Text by Nick Yelverton
Proposal for a public park 2024
glazed stoneware and gold lustre
Hands are a recurring motif in Emily Hunt’s practice. Since the mid 2010s, she has made a series of clay hand sculptures that are modelled on bronze artifacts once used to worship the mysterious cult of Sabazius in the Roman Empire.
The hand featured in Proposal for a public park is wryly intended to worship the so-called ‘cult of Sydney’, whose members are collectively obsessed with food, money, property, stimulants, gambling, employment and fitness. To this end, Hunt has embellished her cult symbol with objects of Sydneysiders’ devotion, including a Fitness First membership, banknotes and a takeaway coffee cup, among other trinkets and charms.
Proposal for a public park was unconsciously modelled by Hunt, who contends that clay ‘guides’ the creation of her sculptures: Automatism is never spoken about in terms relating to clay, or working with clay … automatism can be most direct when creating figures with clay, as the clay leads. The clay wants to become something, it has willpower.
The Sydney Egregore Walk 2023–24
synthetic polymer paint, glazed porcelain and stoneware, gold lustre, pressed weeds and flowers
Drawing inspiration from the grottos within the Roman emperor Nero′s palace, the Domus Aurea, and apotropaic markings in churches and temples designed to avert evil, Hunt has decorated the walls in The Grotto with mural painting, ceramics, and pressed weeds and flowers.
The Sydney Egregore Walk depicts buildings and monuments in Sydney (some of which have been demolished) that hold a special place in her imagination, such as the Grace Brothers department store at Broadway, Walter Burley Griffin’s incinerators at Pyrmont and Willoughby, and the former Carlton & United Breweries at Chippendale. These ‘weird places’ represent an egregore or ‘group mind in magical terms’; Hunt explains:
The mural is asking for participation in this ‘group mind’. Everyone has their unique, mysterious place that speaks to them. This recognition and attention to weird places makes the city itself a kind of strange entity.
The mural also features porcelain tablets predicated on occult literature, which are informed by Hunt’s interest in the preservation of esoteric knowledge in printed material held in public and private collections in Australia. Surreal door handles and keys also adorn the walls, suggesting hidden doorways or portals leading to realms beyond the Art Gallery.
Installation views of the ‘Emily Hunt: The Grotto’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 22 June – 7 October 2024, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Felicity Jenkins. All other photography Jessica Mauer
