Fourth year fine arts student Ruby Joy Eade exudes confidence. Before finishing her BFA Honours at Massey University she’s already landed a solo exhibition at Gilberd Marriott Gallery in Wellington.
‘I think it’s a really, really good thing to do because it kind of breaks the ice for you,’ she says of stepping out into the public arena
Her exhibition entitled I Can Feel Your Pain and Your Feelings is an exploration into the world of social media and online relationship forums. With a love of using text, she extracts short emotive, ‘poetic’ captions and excerpts from the forums, which she has stamped into porcelain clay.
For Ruby, the online world of communication is a dark but beautiful place, ‘…they’re really beautiful places for people to connect with each other. But I do feel this sadness –what’s going to happen next—how far separated are we going to become from each other? So it’s a love-hate relationship with the internet and these places.’
James Gilberd believes Ruby has a good future as an artist ‘I like the way the project keys into social media in a timely, zeitgeist-y but not ‘try-hard, social-media aware’ way; it is relevant, contemporary, edgy.’ Working with someone as young as Ruby (21) has also been a breath of fresh air for Gilberd. ‘The thing with running a gallery is that these days there isn’t much money in it, so the way to go is to be fairly choosey about who you work with. The days of artists getting away with behaving like narcissistic egomaniacs and/or adopting bizarre quirks and personae in order to stand out, is something I have the luxury of distancing myself from!’
I Can Feel Your Pain and Your Feelings runs until the 27th June at Gilberd Marriott Gallery.
