Living in a mirrored sphere, 2019, group show, KINGS Artist-Run, Melbourne, curation and text by Jeremy Eaton

There is a moment when the future projections of space age sci-fi (the NASA-Hollywood kind) lost their edge, when the present seemed to level with the future fantasies of a by-gone era. And despite the lingering, self-fulfilled narratives supplied by film and tv -- megalopoli run by AI and responsive technology -- that have become a reality of the present, in artistic spaces, at least, we tend to find it difficult to come to grips with this 'extreme present'. The artists in Living in a mirrored sphere each create some-kind of personal interpretation of an accelerated present where 'the environments that we inhabit are, more than ever before, being devised on software that can generate the formal features of the "real world"'. Working from a position deeply embedded within this 'New Aesthetic' these artists seem to ask: how do we interpolate the physical present -- architecture, interface and objects -- with our psyche, when the virtual and real entangle to the point of becoming indiscernible? Ariane Jaccarini, Anatol Pitt, Mia Middleton and Joseph Flynn all present work that explores the physical and psychological effects of this entanglement through various imaging processes, speculative realities and synthetic considerations of the body and design. Living in a mirrored sphere draws these artists together to think through the lineages and impacts of virtual space and to consider the way contemporary artists are interpreting this speculative present.