BEFORE THERE'S NOTHING LEFT

This is a plea. This is a threat. How long must we ignore the problem of our toxic consumption? How long until we accept this way of living is going to kill us all? When selling out is the new normal and apathy is all we can afford, what will remain when it all comes tumbling down?

BEFORE THERE’S NOTHING LEFT examines the part we all play within capitalist society and our collective contribution to consumerist culture. It is a protest as well as a guide that offers achievable actions an individual can take to divorce themselves from consumerist ways of living.

This project criticises the way invasive advertisement is seeping into every aspect of our lives and draws attention to how marketing has shifted from allotted airtimes to algorithmic data harvesting and virality-centered market manipulations. Now that humans are brands and products, we become living advertisements. Consumerism now consumes us, every facet of the human condition bought, exploited, and sold.

THERE ARE SEVERAL PUBLIC PROGRAMMING EVENTS TO ACCOMPANY THIS EXHIBITION

4TH OF JULY 11AM ARTST TALK

4TH OF JULY BANNER WORKSHOP

5TH OF JULY FILM SCREENING

Please see our instagram to book tickets

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Virginia Ferguson is a Filipino-American (Tagalog, Chavacano) artist, raised in Ōtautahi for 19 years, recently relocated to Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Her multi-channel moving image works speak to the online culture that is embedded within society and how this culture has changed due to profit incentive. Parodying instructional videos and subscription-based services, the work proposes solutions to consumerist culture. Online services, revolutionary at their inception, have slowly been enshittified into subscription-based models to keep us hooked and ensure a lifetime of steady revenue for corporations. When the incentive is to create for the widest audience possible and for as long as possible, regulatory standards are a thing of the past and quality becomes questionable. Virality, corruption, brainrot, memes, and parody become the tools of the trade.

Haven Hickford is a Tangata Tiriti, transmasculine graphic designer, born and raised in Ōtautahi. His designs are primarily made for and inspired by local activist efforts and actions; they are a reflection of what matters most to the people of Aotearoa. Haven utilises modern graphic design sensibilities and commanding, seductive language similar to that of advertisements to appropriate corporate graphic design tactics for activist use and display how this kind of graphic design can be used by companies to capture and monetize our attention.