Hannah Antalek - Quieter, 2022

Equally a form of escapism and introspection, I employ the use of animals, plants and symbols to carve out an emotional dreamscape hedged in memory, imagination and apocalyptic myth. A stampede of horses slips between a childhood obsession to the four horsemen of death, famine, war and conquest. A field of medicinal flowers part to reveal an inferno shaped tunnel releasing a cloud of moths with eye patterned wings. The forest’s edge is curtained in darkness, suggesting the potential for everything, nothing and anything beyond the illumination of the scene. My work evokes a personal mythology that speaks to the anxieties born from a lack of control, crisis and trauma both real and imagined. Through pattern, repetition, obscuring and excavating my drawings make order from disorder and illuminate the cyclical immanence of apocalyptic thought and the struggle to seek ascendancy over chaos.