A L E X G A W R O N S K I

Alex Gawronski, Museum Fatigue, 2025

PROP, Ashfield, NSW

(Digital prints with resin, stretched, paper, foam-core, electric fire)

3 wall-mounted pedagogical panels intimately describe contemporary war crimes and atrocities. The 3 large printed/painted panels relate to these specific descriptions albeit in abstracted form: proportional with the iphone screen, each of these panels is a blurred representation of the corresponding image described on the wall texts as it attempts to load on screen. The barrage of accessible reportage of recent repeated Israel/US/Western breaches of international law is so voluminous it is impossible to represent adequately. As the endless stream of thousands of horrific online images struggles to be seen and comprehended, each fails in itself, to attest to undeniable evidence of the greater collapse of Western hegemony, a fact that could also be celebrated. The image becomes an approximation of this fall as we attempt to fully grasp its global implications. The pulsing electric fire, also an abstraction and synthetic approximation, speaks both to the comfort victims and witnesses seek in justice, and to the decimating impact of fire and the intentional destruction of infrastructure. If we are fatigued by museums, it is because they routinely fail to show or respond to, the most impactful events of our times.