The Absurd, A Conversation, Saturday 24 July, 1 pm

Sue Orr, Peter Shand, Rebecca Ann Hobbs: ST PAUL St Forum presents a panel discussion on the absurd as a device in the arts used to explore the human condition.  Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Failing, Falling, Flying, Rebecca Ann Hobbs, writer Sue Orr, theorist Peter Shand and artist Rebecca Ann Hobbs will discuss the absurd in relation to their own practices.

Sue Orr is a fiction writer. She has a background in journalism and speechwriting and her first collection of stories, Etiquette for a Dinner Party, was published in 2008. Caren Wilton, in the NZ Listener, wrote, ‘These stories are intriguing, sharp-eyed exploration of gaps and misunderstandings between people, and gaps between hopes or expectations and reality, with some nicely black twists and turns thrown in.’ Orr’s writing has appeared in anthologies, literary journals, and magazines.

Peter Shand writes extensively on art and is a Senior Lecturer at Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland. He wrote the catalogue essay for Failing, Falling, Flying in which he wrote about Rebecca Ann Hobbs work with reference to Spike Milligan as well as Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus, in which Camus observes the absurd condition arises out of the “misalignment of human aspiration toward infinity and the finite nature of actual human experience” (Peter Shand, I’m Walking Backwards for Christmas, 2010)   

Rebecca Ann Hobbs works in video and photography, utilising the language of the absurd in her practice. Her photographs freeze movement, leaving us with the surreal and awkward instant when an animated thing is paused in mid-flight, mid-fall or mid-bang, depicting scenarios which are both carefree and danger full, where the frozen moment is used to capture the riskiness of play and the absurdity of a situation. Her videos lampoon cinematic tradition and invite a reconsideration of its language.