Jacqueline Fahey
I Tell You I Saw it Myself!, 2016
oil on canvas
1520 x 832mm
1547 x 860mm framed
1547 x 860mm framed
Further images
What if an image does not wait for us, but seizes us—mid-breath, mid-thought, mid-fall—insisting that we enter its world already hurtling toward catastrophe? In I Tell You I Saw It...
What if an image does not wait for us, but seizes us—mid-breath, mid-thought, mid-fall—insisting that we enter its world already hurtling toward catastrophe?
In I Tell You I Saw It Myself, Fahey offers no neutral vantage point, plunging us into a scene that feels, for a split second, recognisable – a suburban road, a strip of morning light, the markers of Grey Lynn. Yet just as recognition forms, the scene betrays our familiarity, veering into the uncanny. The sky burns an incandescent, almost apocalyptic yellow; the world tilts; depth collapses; the air resounds with the violent rush of frantic wings.
We are thrust through the scene, forced into the perspective of a malevolent magpie mid-swoop, its vector of predation mapped to our sightline. Scumbled inscriptions claw red across the picture like traumatic recollections, producing a cacophony that refuses coherence.
Above us, two tūī dart into view, their bodies registering defiance in the face of terror. Then comes our accomplice: a second magpie cutting across the top of the composition, mirroring our trajectory. A figure — presumably Fahey — stands marooned on the island refuge, clutching her hat, her sunglass-covered gaze part-imploring, part-accusatory. It is an unsettling fourth-wall break, recognising us before we recognise ourselves. Her lack of engagement with any other protagonists deepens the scene’s uncanny, somnambulist dislocation.
The driver of the sharply angled car stares directly at us, his unreadable intent pulling us further in. Squatting beside the car, a man hovers in a liminal posture between motion and stasis — concern, confusion, and the impulse to help held in unstable suspension.
At the base of the picture, an injured fledgling looks up entreatingly, drawing us into its plight and forcing us to confront our conscience. This disquieting painting refuses passive spectatorship. It situates us within a crisis unfolding at the intersection of the human and the natural world. We find ourselves implicated, entangled, and unmistakably present in a suburban moment that feels at once ordinary, nightmarish, and unnervingly alive.
Text by Anastasia Falkov
In I Tell You I Saw It Myself, Fahey offers no neutral vantage point, plunging us into a scene that feels, for a split second, recognisable – a suburban road, a strip of morning light, the markers of Grey Lynn. Yet just as recognition forms, the scene betrays our familiarity, veering into the uncanny. The sky burns an incandescent, almost apocalyptic yellow; the world tilts; depth collapses; the air resounds with the violent rush of frantic wings.
We are thrust through the scene, forced into the perspective of a malevolent magpie mid-swoop, its vector of predation mapped to our sightline. Scumbled inscriptions claw red across the picture like traumatic recollections, producing a cacophony that refuses coherence.
Above us, two tūī dart into view, their bodies registering defiance in the face of terror. Then comes our accomplice: a second magpie cutting across the top of the composition, mirroring our trajectory. A figure — presumably Fahey — stands marooned on the island refuge, clutching her hat, her sunglass-covered gaze part-imploring, part-accusatory. It is an unsettling fourth-wall break, recognising us before we recognise ourselves. Her lack of engagement with any other protagonists deepens the scene’s uncanny, somnambulist dislocation.
The driver of the sharply angled car stares directly at us, his unreadable intent pulling us further in. Squatting beside the car, a man hovers in a liminal posture between motion and stasis — concern, confusion, and the impulse to help held in unstable suspension.
At the base of the picture, an injured fledgling looks up entreatingly, drawing us into its plight and forcing us to confront our conscience. This disquieting painting refuses passive spectatorship. It situates us within a crisis unfolding at the intersection of the human and the natural world. We find ourselves implicated, entangled, and unmistakably present in a suburban moment that feels at once ordinary, nightmarish, and unnervingly alive.
Text by Anastasia Falkov