Battle Cat is a new collection of drawings and prints that explore post-nuclear legacies, destructivism, folklore and storytelling by artist Adam Hogarth.
“We all desire the future to turn out more happily than I have figured it. In particular we desire our present civilization to advance steadily toward some kind of Utopia. The thought that it may decay and collapse, and that all its spiritual treasure may be lost irrevocably, is repugnant to us. Yet this must be faced as at least a possibility.” Olaf Stapledon, ‘Last and First Men’.
There was a disaster! A house of cards teetering on oblivion finally toppled. Under their own top-heavy weight, political and bureaucratic structural systems of yesteryear finally collapsed. A series of nuclear wars ensued, followed by a complete ecological and environmental disintegration. Crops collapsed and as nuclear reactors failed one by one, huge swathes of land, and oceans became contaminated and uninhabitable. Inevitably, the excess of nuclear meltdown finally permeated the entire earth.
“No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween.” Emily St. John Mandel, ‘Station Eleven’.