Artists Erika Mashig, Biliana Velkova, and Sunshine Frère work together to present visitors with a variety of work that visualizes the complex and ever intertwined relationship between collapse and resilience. Breakdown. Buildup. continues these themes making attempts to reorganize and construct new worlds. Mashig, Velkova and Frère’s work asks what strategies can we adopt to create change, within ourselves, within the world? How can we adapt to life within this new era of unpredictability?

Featuring utopian visions, surreal dreamscapes and abstracted landscapes, Breakdown. Buildup. invites visitors to explore the notion that finality does not exist, there is only change.

Velkova’s drawings delve into deconstruction and construction from the perspective of utopian landscapes and still lifes. Her large scale charcoal drawings encompass textured and high-volume imaginative spaces that can only exist in a post-collapsed world. 

Mashig’s medium is naturally destructive, she creates reduction prints, cutting and taking away, before adding  layers, shapes and colours to create an image. Build up and breakdown are integral to her dynamic process. Each stage of carving is slow and methodical, constantly diminishing until the image is complete and there is hardly a memory of what was there before. Just as time and the elements reveal new terrains in nature, Mashig’s final prints are the result of an accumulation of thoughts, gestures, and actions.

Frère pairs digital collage with colourful monochromatic characters. Jellyfish blooms, sparkling eyes and hazy landscapes reflect on our climate emergency, our collective thirst for more of everything, and the importance of humour and love in times of uncertainty.