Media Portal

'The monstrous, the abnormal, has become mundane. The body has become this contemporary chimera of meat, metal and code. The body you are born with is most likely not be the body you die with. Your face transplant, twin-turbine heart, 3D-printed kidney, carbon-fibre prosthetic hand and neural implant augment and extend your lifespan. The dead, the brain dead, the undead, the yet to be born, synthetic life and machine life all exist proximal to other bodies, microbial life and viral code. The monstrous is not what you imagined.'

Stelarc

'The monster reflected in my recent work is a monster of human origins, it grows inside of us, as an unrecognisable part of ourselves. It is the monster within, the monster that lurks in the id. Aren’t the most terrifying monsters those lingering in the uncanny valley, human but not human?'

Erin Coates and Anna Nazzari

'The Monster for me are the warning signs that reveal themselves whilst the Colonial Beast chews the fat of the land, the warnings and aberrations are audible but located far from any centre of the so called civilized.'

Megan Cope

'My monster threatens from the horizon: a phantom in the imagination of a complicit majority. It waits in the wings; eager to participate in societal discourse, while being actively excluded. It’s the scapegoat for the anxieties of a society that jealously guards a self-perception that hasn’t come to terms with its foundations. The humanity of my monster is rejected, because by affording it this privilege we see ourselves reflected, and this concession makes us accountable.'

Abdul Abdullah

The monster is THE PATRIARCHY. A monster that doesn't know it's a monster is the saddest and most sinister kind.'

Willoh S. Weiland

'There is a monster that hides at the conjunction of technology and humans. The movement of data is monstrous - an enormous, unseen spectre, dark and ominous.'

Kynan Tan

'My monster is Homo Apis, the chimeric form of human and honeybee bound in the spectre of ecological collapse. It embodies the deeply enmeshed ecological relationship we have with the more-than-human world, and troubles our sense of hubris which places us as a species at the centre of the universe.'

Mike Bianco

'My monster is INTOLERANCE. Because it has been adopted by Fundamentalism, to exploit and exacerbate the natural fear of difference.'

Aldo Iacobelli

'The monsters in my work tap into broader themes of growth, regeneration, mutation and decay. The work also speaks to the notion of the monster as a conduit for fear and desire as well as the history of the ‘dangerous woman’ in literature.'

Julia Robinson

'My monster is my imagination - it is ever present and will not be subdued!'

Judith Wright

'My monster is the human body. For centuries in the West we have internalised classical depictions of the male body culminating in the symbol of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man as the archetype of humanity - male, fit, upright, white, bipedal, flawless. This dominant image underscores patriarchal structures and codes of behaviour at the exclusion of all others. It has served to support colonisation and capitalism which, as we know, are violent systems built upon hierarchy and marginalisation. This idea of humanity is implicit in the destruction of nature and the unquestioned domination of humans over the natural world. My monster re-configures the morphology and behaviour of the human, manifesting an image of symbiotic integration between multiple bodies into a cooperative whole.'

Garry Stewart

'My monster is other people. I’m attracted to and afraid of them at the same time. I grew up as the only child of a single mum, moving from one rented home to another, which meant long periods in my room, taking walks, listening to music and reading. Other kids seemed a bit like ghosts, their communal games, connections and, at worst, mob tendencies – mysterious and unknowable. Just as I’d learn the rules, we’d move to another town in some other state. I developed great skills at adapting, but had a sense of social abstraction and a recurrent distrust of peers and their tribes. I’m left with a huge curiosity about their games, their bonds, their wonders and their horrors.'

Julian Day