Hallucination

Across his practice Ross Manning often uses familiar household items to create dynamic sculptures that play on the viewer’s visual perception. Hallucination uses mass produce bamboo match-stick blinds that slowly move in a loop on a motor in front of a window. The thin lines overlay facilitating a moiré effect in the perceivers eye—building a strange visual texture akin to water or the electromagnetic static of old television screens. The lines pulse and distort to modulate the outside landscape beyond the window. Hallucination was developed during COVID-19 lockdowns to emphasise how normal things started to take on different meanings and how actions became obscure through repetition—like looking out the window. Hallucination plays on the threshold of mundanity and absurdity—a blind in front of a window is incredibly average yet the work facilitates a hallucinatory feeling and visual experience.