Art is Predictive is a new monthly one-night showcase at House Conspiracy, in which Brisbane artists share the ways in which their practice intersects with the practices of divination and symbolism. On 27 March Seth Ellis will present a photocollage Tarot deck he designed over the course of the pandemic lockdown in 2020, and give readings to visitors.
“I think of Tarot as modular storytelling—as divination, it’s a way of telling stories to ourselves about ourselves, in a small structure that forces intellect and intuition to work together. As an American, I’ve always been puzzled and fascinated by what it means to be American; I’ve lived all over the US, and now that I live in Australia I have a large set of perspectives even of my own to draw from, let alone the many possible avenues of history and symbolism. This deck tends to draw from the history of labour in the US, hopefully in a somewhat more diverse showing than one usually gets in nostalgic views of the time these photos were made. Some of these cards are thus critiques of current culture, and how we got here (the global we, by now). But of course, being Tarot cards, each one has a number of different possible stories to which they could be joined.”
