Everlasting Happiness

Deborah White, Everlasting Happiness (2022) Film Still. Image courtesy of the artist.

Deborah White

Gallery 2

Friday 19 April - Sunday 12 May

Opening Thursday 18 April 2024, 6pm - 8pm

Everlasting Happiness is a video project that entertains the utopian idea of love as a political concept. The underlying philosophy of this aspiration is to love the most distant. This is not a sentimental notion of love, but a robust kind with a revolutionary power. Viewing the actions of love as a deployment of force, this work intertwines supernatural wonder with the spectacle of war.

The playful and vibrant performance-based video depicts an anarcho-mystic quest battling against the pathology of the post-truth world. Featuring fictitious characters that defy the rational world, the video is infused with flower power, music and animal warriors that open the heart to hope and joy. The hand-made psychedelic costumes, props and scenery are a signature of the artist’s practice. Humour and fantasy are also important elements in her work. As humour is vital to social bonding, the self-deprecating humour of White’s work serves to collapse hierarchies and liquefy the gap between the work and the viewer. The intention of the playful fantasy, on the other hand, is to open the mind to other ways of knowing and to imagine infinite possibilities.

On a global scale, the project reflects on a war against the forces driving towards a dystopia. The political, however, is also personal and, as such, the artist performs as all the characters— representing a self-reflection on the internal struggle to overcome bias to love unconditionally.  With the transformative power of love this work strives for the idealistic desire of a utopian non-place of the imagination.

Deborah White, Everlasting Happiness (2022) Film Still. Image courtesy of the artist.

About the Artist

Deborah is a Melbourne-based artist working across performance-based video, photography and mixed media installations. In 2015, she completed her MFA at Monash University.

Deborah has exhibited her work in numerous national and international exhibitions, screenings and festivals. She has had solo exhibitions at Manningham Art Gallery (2024), FELTspace (2023) and Bundoora Homestead Art Centre (2016). Collaborative projects have been shown at Transmediale in Berlin (2009) and her videos have been screened at Athens International Film and Video Festival (U.S.A, 2023), Adelaide Festival Centre (2018) and Counihan Gallery (2018). 

White has also participated in several artist residencies, such as Bayside City Council’s Billilla Program (2010) and Mornington Peninsula Shire’s Police Point Artist-in-Residence (2019). She has been a finalist in the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (2022) and Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Art (2023) and a recipient of the Cancer Council of Victoria Art Awards (2007), Linden Postcard Prize (2004) and Erotica: National Acquisition Prize (2010).