There is a gorilla on mars

(2016)

Toad on the Moon takes the ‘boiling frog’ metaphor as a point of departure: the false but persistent belief that a frog will remain in slowly heated water until it boils. The exhibition uses this fiction to consider how gradual deterioration can become normalised, and how adaptation can shift from a means of survival into a form of inertia.

The title draws on myths that locate the figure of a toad on the moon, where it appears in stories of transformation, immortality and escape. Between the warming water and the moon, the exhibition traces a tension between endurance and withdrawal, asking when adaptation becomes acceptance, and when escape might offer another way of responding to an increasingly uninhabitable present.

Location

Granary building, King's Cross, London, UK

Dates

2016

Materials / media

plaster, yellow ladder, paddling pool, bamboo, mixed textile, iPad


Photo Credits

João Neves