Image: Pat HOFFIE Smoke and Mirrors 16 2016, charcoal and ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist.
This is a charcoal and ink work on paper, created in 2016. Measuring 69 centimetres high and 50 centimetres wide, it is one of 18 in a series entitled Smoke and Mirrors.
The series is exhibited in a continuous row across three walls that make a ‘U’ shape, with each work closely and evenly spaced between one another. The work described is shown on the back middle wall on which 8 of these works in the series feature and is third from the end. The works are pinned to the wall and when exhibited together form something of a narrative working from left to right. A final work from the series is shown on a grander scale, blown up and pasted across the length of the gallery wall on the right-hand side.
Two thick black clouds of smoke rise up through the middle of this work. The smoke shown on the right-hand side climbs towards the top of the work before veering off to the left. This cloud is larger and denser and originates from a boat that is tipped on its side, its mast on a diagonal, sinking into the water. Beside it, in the bottom corner to the left, a smaller cloud of smoke equally as toxic billows from the surface of the water further in the distance. Closer to the shore we find six figures waist-deep in high waters with another two figures knee-deep. One of the figures has an arm outstretched in a gesture offering the provision of a helping hand.
News media accounts of refugees seeking asylum across troubled and treacherous waters under poor conditions is felt here, combining with a sense of despair evocative of the dark shadows and smudges cast by the charcoal on the stark white paper.
Smoke and Mirrors is an expression often utilised to obscure the truth of a situation with misleading information and is also described by the artist as working here in this two-fold way as follows:
I produced another works-on-paper series called Smoke and Mirrors. It’s a kind of visual anthology of failing vessels, sinking hopes, threatening skies. Horizons all-too-far-away. Everything and everyone all-at-sea. All of us. Not just those on-the-move.
She goes on to state that…
Art can offer us a way of remembering who we once were; where we once were; how we once felt about the world; what we once may have whispered or screamed. And it can remind us that in the face of what might have seemed insurmountable, we chose to stand up to take the option of folly: we made art in response to our times.