KATE ALLEN & EDWIN ROSTRON
The Disaster Area
7 - 22 July 2007

“There was a starting point for these drawings. There was a girl who held the future of her community in her hands and rather than save it she chose to destroy it. But it was foolish to begin knowing the end so the girl and her decision have been conveniently forgotten and I am going to pretend that I don’t know how the story will end. It will just continue, seemingly without aim, with all involved earnestly engaged in their attempts to rescue a desperate situation. You see, there is some hope now. You can’t have a story without hope.”

For The Disaster Area Kate Allen presents a series of pencil drawings based on a short story she started but didn’t finish. What does exist of this story provides a foundation from which the drawings, adaptations of existing imagery, can begin to suggest other meanings beyond but never wholly detached from the constraints of the implied narrative.

Edwin Rostron’s new animation Morris and the Other is a hypnotic tale of frustration and desire, lovingly drawn in 2B pencil. We journey through a bleak, shimmering netherworld, populated by a series of fantastical characters. Impossible creatures roam over grey, featureless plains and a curious drama plays out inside an isolated shed. Our vacant hero Morris stumbles along in a state of permanent stupefaction. When his path crosses with the mysterious ‘Other’, his fate is sealed.