Image: Pat HOFFIE Force Majeure (Underworld Bunny) 2018, watercolour and gouache on tracing paper. Courtesy of the artist.
CONTENT WARNING: This audio description includes sensitive content, describing war and using coarse language.
This is a watercolour and gouache work on tracing paper by Pat Hoffie, produced in the year 2018. Measuring 2 metres and 20 centimetres high by 3 metres wide, it forms part of a body of work entitled Clusterfkk (spelled C-l-u-s-t-e-r-f-k-k), a series where each work is divided into separate panels positioned together side by side to create the finished composition. On this occasion the work is divided up into 8 panels, 4 on top and 4 down below. These delicate works on paper are attached to the walls with magnets and left unframed.
Scenes that are typical of events that document natural disasters (fire, storms, floods) and governmental or societal actions (war, invasion, civil unrest), merge in this force majeure rendered by the artist, delivering an onslaught of chaos and destruction to the viewer.
Working from top to bottom we are presented with a burning sky filled with plumes of grey and burnt orange clouds of toxic smoke. Raining down from above are sharp diagonal lines exposing the trajectories of bombs colliding and exploding upon the earth below. A tsunami surges beyond, producing a tall dark navy-blue wall of water captured in a moment of stasis before wreaking disaster on the world below.
In the top right-hand corner, a tree catches alight, licks of orange fire and flame engulfing its branches. Its root system is exposed and winding, traveling down the length of the artwork moving from top to bottom towards the far right- and left-hand corners at the bottom of the artwork. Human figures and Manga cartoonish characters dot the landscape. Four of these figures are shown running across the middle of the work, as if in hot pursuit or perhaps fleeing the danger unfolding around them. On the left of this scene, one of these figures is shown running downhill, craning their head and neck back, with their mouth open wide as if aghast at the horrors unravelling in the scene. However, many of the other figures are shown head down engrossed in their electronic devices, smartphones and laptops seemingly unaware of the turmoil and horrors taking place. The focal point of this nightmarish, absurdist scene takes place on the middle far right-hand side where the pit of a volcano or dark black hole is uncovered to reveal a mother and child lying alongside one another on a yellow-brown mound of dirt. The mother and child clutch their hands to their ears covering them from sound while above these two figures upon the mound sits another child-like character, but one dressed in a white bunny suit with pink ears. Dubbed by the artist, ‘Underworld Bunny’, the figure shoots red diagonal lines that move across the surface of the artwork and are responsible for detonating dozens of blasts and bombs, malicious in their intent.
The artist, Pat Hoffie, describes the series as follows:
I started the series, Clusterfkk, in 2017. They were on big, fragile skins of wrinkly paper that partially disintegrated as I scrubbed across the surfaces with watercolour and with gouache. Around that time, our training in how to be fearful was ramping upwards. Details of armed combats right across the tiny planet. Eco-wars. Fires. Flooding. Earthquakes. Typhoons. Tsunamis. Civil wars of one kind or another. Education disintegrating into managerialism. Politics and world events disintegrating into 24/7 news cycles. Yet, here and there, scraps of everyday goodness surfaced. I kept painting. About Country. About history. About failures of one kind or another. And about minor miracles that happen along the way. That was all before the puncture-point of 2020, after which the series seemed curiously prognostic.