approaching midnight

Curated by Steph Cibich - Recipient of the 2020 Emerging Curator Program

Featuring Steph Fuller (SA) Emilija Kasumovic (SA)

Our world is going to end. It’s just a matter of time. 

We live in troubled times. Our existence is cast against a backdrop of escalating climate risks, misinformation, political turbulence and an evolving pandemic. Despite all efforts, the new normal feels like a pendulum clock swaying tenuously between progress and Armageddon. 

Individuals too feel the weight of time in their everyday lives. Time is relentless, indifferent and before we know it, time is up. How we use our time is critical and in our globalised climate, time is ultimately about keeping score. Because deep down, we’re all counting. 

approaching midnight is informed by the Doomsday Clock. Designed by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, this metaphorical timepiece aims to warn us about how close humanity is to destroying itself and our planet with dangerous technologies, nuclear warfare and climate change. At the time of this exhibition’s conception in 2020, the Doomsday Clock was set at two minutes to midnight; the closest setting to the end of time since the Cold War. Now, in 2021, we find ourselves with less than 100 seconds left on the clock highlighting the urgency of a global existential crisis and the accelerating pace at which our future slips between our fingers. 

approaching midnight invites emerging artists Steph Fuller (SA) and Emilija Kasumovic (SA) to explore these ideas through sensitive investigations of contemporary existence. Curated by Steph Cibich (SA) and presented as part of the FELTspace Emerging Curator Program, this exhibition was intended to be shown in 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19. approaching midnight features new photographic, video and installation works produced in response to our times, one another’s practice and the collaborative conversations between the artists and curator. 

Steph Fuller

‘When this work was created, Australia was on fire. Every day I saw the devastation on the news and watched fire icons appearing on the state map. A nation was pushed past breaking point. A broken government paraded its flaws. I could do little more than watch both fire and ignorance spread, and mourn the death of the lucky country.’ – Steph Fuller 

Fuller is a South Australian artist working with still and moving images. Her camera-based works examine her surroundings, exposing the lesser-known vulnerabilities of creatures and objects

Emilija Kasumovic

‘We are grappling with the fast pace of change and nihilistic anxiety brought on by annihilating climate change. In response to this, my work includes a spatial installation affected by natural forces that govern our existence. Polyvinyl acetate stream-like threads are hung to impart a sense of the in-between and the flux in which we currently stand; not quite over the edge, but on the threshold. As viewers navigate thiswork, they are immersed and connected in this liminal space, in-between the light and the dark abyss.‘ – Emilija Kasumovic

Kasumovic works within an expanded practice of drawing, sculpture and installation. Her work analyses the intersections between science and spirituality, exploring divisions between nature and culture, our physical and the nonphysical reality, and living and non-living matter.

Steph Cibich
Cibich is an Adelaide based emerging curator with a passion for bringing creative projects to life. She believes in art’s palpable ability to help us lead more engaged, and informed lives and is committed to the promotion of contemporary artists. 

Cibich is the Assistant Curator/Program Officer at the Centre for Creative Health and founder of  Art Vending Machines Australia (AVMA). In 2019, she was selected as Emerging Curator by the Art History & Curatorship Alumni Network & Floating Goose Studios Inc. and received the inaugural City of Onkaparinga Contemporary Curator Award for SALA 2019. In 2020, Cibich was also appointed the inaugural ART WORKS Emerging Curator, an exhibition and residency program delivered by Guildhouse in partnership with the City of Adelaide.