Exhibition displays death in extraordinary way

'It's Going To Be Alright'. An Image from Rebecca Swan's exhibition, The Exquisite Wound. On now at Te Manawa. Photo: REBECCA SWAN

The S+ART Festival has launched at Te Manawa today and with it an exhibition that challenges the perception of death.

Rebecca Swan's The Exquisite Wound explores the concept of death, and the stigmas surrounding it.

The display has multiple features including 20 stunning prints, stock frame animation, two-channel video work and 'Becoming Sky' - a unique bubble machine showcasing 26 images.

She says the idea for the exhibition began when she found a dead bird.

"It kind of all rolled on from there. After a few strange reactions people actually got into it and started to call me up saying, 'hey I've got a possum'."

Swan began photographing the dead animals as singles, allowing them to fall naturally into place.

"I've got a huge respect for when I was working with the animals. There was a reverence to it - I let them guide me in terms of what they had to say."

Swan said the two-year process was very much intuitive and developed as she discovered more about the animals.

"It was sort of this strange speaking from the other side...they had messages and if I tried to think too much about it, it wouldn't work."

During a period of approximately 10 days, Swan received more dead animals than usual.
"It was an extraordinary week; I got a duck, a finch, a dove, a rat, a possum - I thought this must be about relationships.

"I started pairing them together; I would handle them, turn them and think how did their bodies fall, how they embraced in different ways.

"It was kind of this respect...we have this physical existence but, we don't stop communicating once we're not in our physical beings, it's just in a different way."

Becoming Sky was based on this concept, with the bubble representing our physical body or container. The bubbles produced from the machine reflect the images of the dead animals then pop, dissipating into smoke.

"It's about where do we go after death but, it's playful, it's mesmerising, it's not scary, and it's get of taking the stigma out of death," Swan says. "As a society we are death phobic, and there's a massive fear about it.

"This feels like an offering to maybe look at it slightly differently.

"This is something really remarkable. It's a really contemplative show...the process is very much not about thinking. The ideal response would be that people start to think about it in an emotional way too."

Swan was diagnosed with cancer at age 23 and says she now treasures every day.

"It really did have a massive effect on who I am so I make the most out of life. This exhibition is about dealing with the stuff we can't understand."

The Exquisite Wound, Te Manawa, May 12-October 8.
S+ART Festival, Te Manawatu, May 12-13, 10am-5pm. All ages. Admission free.