Sick My Duck II

November 12  –  December 4 2016
@ Run Amok Gallery

Rat Heist’s second solo exhibition, Sick My Duck II – The Flying Circus featured a range of cryptic allegorical paintings. This body of works, collectively carried a placid undertone which deals with the artist’s grieve for the loss of his loved one; his lament over the domestication on graffiti art; and other works were the artist’s responses to the current socio-political affairs.

About the artist

Since young, Rat Heist has been observing his parents painting at their garage, absorbing visual stimulus from his father’s zines collection and and The Clash records. His visual approach is predominantly influenced by the U.K. rock band Crass, which exhibits heavy use of collage and stencil on their records design. Some of his works have been shown in art galleries. He now works as a sculptor, backdrop designer and sometimes makes woodblock prints.

Artist statement

“The Flying Circus” is the second edition of Sick My Duck after “First Day on Earth”. In “First Day on Earth”, I revisited things that inspired me, from art to punk music. In “The Flying Circus” I delved more into philosophy, politics, science, and bad or absurd dark humour.

We are creatures who constantly seek meaning in our lives, yet we are sometimes disappointed by this flying circus of meaninglessness. Regardless of who we are, we always look for what gives our lives meaning either from affection from loved ones, promising career path, financial stability or ideology of punk rock band. Many of us invest our lives in finding its meaning, some of us look for it through religion, some of us see ourselves fighting for social justice. All of these might or might not fulfill what we have been searching for.

Alternatively, we seek answers from authority figures, from our parents, religious leaders, government representative, or established writers, scientists, philosophers, musicians or punk rockers. But these figures, are just like us, people who don’t have answers, people who just follow others before them or just have to figure it out for themselves. If you believe in god, you probably believe in it by adhering to your essence, given by god, it bestows your life with meanings. You may or may not know what your essence is, you only know your essence gives you a purpose because you were born to be a certain thing.

I don’t believe in that, I believe we are born without any hardwired purpose, it is up to ourselves to figure out our own essences. If the world is going to have anything that most of us value, like justice, freedom, peace and so on, we have to put it there ourselves, otherwise those things are only illusionary. The world and your life can have meanings, but only if you choose to assign one to it. Since the world exists without purpose, you can choose your own purpose, for your own life.

Exhibition stills