HAIKU FOR A HONEY GIRL

HAIKU FOR A HONEY GIRL
30 MARCH – 16 APRIL 2016
JAKE PREVAL
Haiku For A Honey Girl is a poetic response to the
early HIV/AIDS crisis, which Preval experienced as
a teenager growing up in the 00’s solely through the
pages of secondhand paperbacks.
Eclipsing the tragic exaltation of the coming out novel,
this period of queer cultural history crystalised in prose
was characterised by a collective grief, anger and dark
humour. The characters that populated these stories
became conduits to a time ‘before’ and an entry point into a
contemporary queer identity.
Informed by curator John Davies’ notion of ‘feeling
backwards’, Preval re-enters these narratives and unpicks
their impact in the present. Collapsing memory, displaced
nostalgia, literary space and objects into strange new forms
Haiku for a Honey Girl attempts to memorialise the role
fictional characters can play in constructing meaning in our
lives. Oscillating between the makeshift and the monumental
the work proposes a series of sculptural strategies for
mourning the loss of these characters and attempts to
create a temporary space for their remembrance.
An essay by Nikos Pantazopoulos will accompany the show.
JAKE PREVAL | Haiku for a Honey Girl (detail), 2016, C-Type Print
www.jakepreval.com
Level 7, Room 14, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston St, Melbourne VIC 3000
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