Ole Hagen
Kit Poulson
Alex Baker
THE RETURN
OF THE
NULLIFIERS
Exhibition: 16 January – 13 February 2016
Standpoint Gallery
Three Dudmen, old friends, set off on a sea voyage in a boat with one oar. People watched them spiral round the harbour for a couple of days then left them to their circling. They were quickly forgotten.
Some years later in a dense fog the crew of a fishing boat heard arguing voices drifting across the water. They found the men in their tiny craft, and towed them home. The sun burnt away the fog and a strange cargo was revealed; a ball of tar and a tangle of sound.They spoke to the crowd. They were no longer the Dudmen, they were the Nullifiers and they had a vision! Their boat had sailed the inside of the globe and seen the negative underworld of all objects and beings, the void of things, the vacuum of ideas and the profoundly irrelevant. With new powers they knew that they could turn things inside out and present to the world the dark matter of substance itself. Now the Nullifiers have set up their ‘dark hut’ in order to display the treasures of the un-world, and to communicate their learning. They have broken open the great tar ball they rolled through the street, and inside, such wonders! Dressed only in the rags of a story they present the artefacts and simulacra they have brought with them from the other side, turning all matter upside down and the wrong way round. They are lit by the dark light and they
leak their craft into the gutters of the town. Ah mystic cellars and thrice blessed drains.Visionaries or tattered oafs? Judge for yourselves.