Birth. Awakening. Growth. Adolescence. Maturity. Courtship. Motherhood. Tranquillity. This is the trajectory laid out in Ava Seymour's solo exhibition Domestic Wild at Titirangi's Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, each milestone presented as a piece of found, printed paper in a plastic sleeve. The artist has taken command of the exhibition space, dividing its walls in two by painting the lower sections an absorptive matte grey. The result is a kind of horizon line running from left to right, accompanied by Seymour's timeline, a horizontal fall from birth to tranquillity. Although many different living organisms might undertake this journey, the subject matter of this exhibition indicates that in this instance, those who are do so are a multitude of domestic cats.
, curated by James Gatt, consists of a display of carefully chosen printed material and ephemera pertaining to felines. Illustrations and plates have been extracted from printed publications, sometimes paired, clustered, mounted and framed, sometimes affixed to the wall simply with nails. From within our networked culture, in which pussies and toms are usually admired as part of comical cat memes and short videos, Seymour de-virtualises these companion animals, so that they might be gazed upon in an alternative way. The cat composites are accompanied by book covers that have been splayed and opened out so that their rectangular forms, cloth-bound covers; ; ; The book titles provide scraps of narrative commentary as do a few textbased works. Short pseudo-captions read 'PRESENT: E/powdered Pussycats/stiletto heels' and 's is a Pussycat Club'.
