The Future Royal Family of Antarctica

Sean Healy + Joe Thurston

October 23rd – November 21st



"The Future Royal Family of Antarctica"

an exhibition by Portland, OR
artists Sean Healy and Joe Thurston.

The installation takes as its departure point a possible future history in which all traces of humanity have disappeared, icebergs exist only as myth, and Antarctica is the last continent.
We learn as children that the earth has undergone many drastic physical changes. Our teachers tell us that “right where we are standing now was once a vast ocean” or “vast desert” or “dense jungle” – an unimaginably different landscape, populated by unknowable plants and animals. In the future proposed by The Future Royal Family of Antarctica icebergs will be icons of a moment past, a representation of the geological era we inhabit right now, and a reminder that the landscape we perceive to be immutable can be completely transformed.

For The Future Royal Family of Antarctica the iceberg has become a mythological icon, and the penguin a family crest, like a dragon or griffin in our times – archetypes which represent power, a link to the past, and a deep understanding of the mysterious. These symbols are a reminder of the reality of global transformation, the scope of time, and its inevitable march forward.


contact at theeastwestproject@gmail.com

or

www.damstuhltrager.com/east_west.html.