The Thousands

If anyone could draw down the moon, it’d be Mikala Dwyer. The backbone of her work disassociates itself from the rational, but there’s always some calm within the chaos. The eye of the storm and such. Aside from making a wide array of works featuring plants growing in plastic, employing clairvoyants to do her dirty work, and invoking ghosts on Cockatoo Island, Dwyer seems set upon bringing a little bit of magic back into the old white box.

The diversity of materials and the sheer scope of her subjects is comparable to your boy next door conspiracy theorist who recites Zeitgeist while showing you pictures of dead witches, and all you can smell is Dragon’s Blood incense. It deals with some hefty themes – mortality, death, the mysterious, but always in a playful way. Her work is somehow manic and calm all at the same time – perhaps the manic parts just come from a discomfort with the mysterious. It’s a return to communication without technology.

Her materials range from Ouija boards to dressed up totems, candles and windsocks. Both spectral and profane, Draw Down The Moon is Dada without existentialism.