The Withering I

Based in South Australia, Rebecca Hastings’ practice engages with themes of the posthuman condition, reflecting and drawing on both personal and collective existential anxieties. Adopting the conventions of figurative and still life painting genres, Hastings’ classically-rendered paintings merge uncanny and gothic tropes with the everyday to convey otherworldly, surreal narratives. Utilising visual qualities of Romanticism, hard-edge graphics and pop culture iconography heighten the temporal interplay that typifies Hastings’ work. These loaded yet obscure conflations enable the work to hover within a psychological mindscape - an invocation of the Uncanny Valley disturbingly poised between the real, and the unreal. Overall, Hastings' works acknowledge the inexpressible fears of our time, playing out as memento mori for our planet, our innocence, and our humanity.