aeolidida, 2023 

Adelaide Festival Centre Plaza

GRC, Aluminium, paint, LED lighting, resin, pewter

aeolidida may not be the easiest of words to pronounce. It’s not a familiar looking word. It’s a bit of a tongue twister but has a nice round sound to it, and it feels good when you write it by hand. The word offers up abstract and fictional associations, but it also refers to a real life species of soft bodied sea creatures, more commonly known as Sea Slugs. These creatures, which inhabit all the oceans of the world, often present themselves in the most fantastic, elegant forms and vivid colour patterns. This is something that they themselves may not be able to appreciate, given that their eyes are so small that they can probably only see dark and light tones. They make up for this lack of sight with other more sensitive sensory organs (that of touch, smell and taste). They are hermaphrodites, containing both male and female sexual organs, and most of them can regrow their head if it comes off. Nice.