To The Filter: Josh Juett

In this series, South Australian artist Josh Juett delves into the perpetual search for meaning amid uncertainty. Drawing inspiration from Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” where a man’s transformation into a giant cockroach leads to his family’s revulsion, Juett examines themes of dehumanisation and misunderstanding. The cockroach symbolises our struggle with life’s chaos and our quest for meaning, especially during crises. This process reveals the universe is not obliged to be understood, and deeper inquiry only leads to more ambiguity.
 
Overthinking often prevents us from finding satisfactory answers, representing a complete dissatisfaction with the process. This series encapsulates the human experience of relentless questioning and the discomfort that accompanies it. We seek opportunities for confirmation of our beliefs, yet we are often confronted with new information that seems to contradict and shroud the truth in obscurity. We believe that answers lie just beyond our reach, yet they remain elusive.
 
This series encourages you to embrace uncertainty and find solace in the ongoing journey of seeking answers. Through “To The Filter,” Juett aims to provoke contemplation and a deeper understanding of our place in an ambiguous universe.Working primarily as a painter, Juett explores relational dynamics and self-inquiry. Drawn to sombre Dutch still life paintings of the 1600s, Juett’s own exacting and technically precise paintings excavate his childhood recollections. While folding references to popular culture cartoons, toys and video game into playful and surreal compositions, ideologically Juett’s work stems from an uncomfortable awareness of his own thought processes. Many of the finely wrought, vividly realised paintings are illustrative of an internal monologue, with beloved cartoon characters and prized objects from the artist’s own collection serving as avatars. Much like the wunderkammers of seventeenth century Dutch collectors, Juett’s pictorial accumulation of objects becomes a means of self-expression; a way of understanding the world and describing one’s own identity through gathering and display.

Juett’s exhibitions are complex, densely allusive thickets of symbols and coded meanings; they invite you to ruminate. Juett invokes a cryptic personal symbology that is by turns irreverent and affecting in its allusion to the transience of life. Turning his work over in your mind and teasing out its interwoven threads is one of the principal pleasures of the experience Juett offers.