CARGO CULT
an exhibition at Cafe Gallery Projects, the gallery, Southwark Park, London SE16 2UA from 13 October to 7 November 2004.

A limited box edition of 200 containing 10 reproductions selected from the exhibition 'Cargo Cult' was published to coincide with the show [isbn 0-953630-4-3].

Original exhibited works measure 40mm x 60cm printed on somerset 255 gsm paper.

Cargo Cults, as exemplified in their anthropological definition, developed in the South Pacific as far back as the 1850's; though western perception of cult worship is drawn mainly from experiences during the later part of World War II. Cargo Cult is a term for the sparodic emergence of new religious movements which islanders in the South Pacific [particularly Melanesia and New Guinea] believe will allow them to attain economic parity with the West.

The 'cargo' referred to is the gamut of Western material products from tins of food to metal axes to the airplanes which the islanders have seen disgorge these goods. 'Cargo' is the spiritual mechanism which can deliver these desirable objects to those who comprehend it. The U.S. advance across the South Pacific towards Japan in the closing stages of W.W.II was followed by phenomena that intensified cargo beliefs.

These included shipments of cargo literally dropping out of the sky to U.S. Marines and the presence of black men among the U.S. troops who clearly understood the magic of cargo. These black men could operate radio transmitters which beckoned the falling cargo from the ancestors and seemed to the oppressed islanders to be dealing with the white man confidentially and on equal terms.

American magazines brought by the GI's contained photographic proof that in America black people lived surrounded by cars and refrigerators in the kind of consumer paradise which the islanders aspired to and had been striving unsuccessfully to obtain. Just as in the American UFO contact cults of the late 1940's, the transmission of higher knowledge and culture also seems to be an important dynamic in the cargo cult.

Examples include ritual performance, demonstrations and installation works such as building decoy airstrips cut out of the bush, with bamboo radio shacks and antennae to receive messages regarding deliveries. Cargo cults function as a fascinating prism projecting back the fundamental tensions within contemporary globalisation.

The spiritualising power of Western consumerism, from the frantic attempts to attract the capital opportunities of Eastern Europe, or the free market economies of South East Asia, and the many religious cults extolling a reassuring gospel of material success; all are reconfigured in the Melanesian rites to draw down the cargo.

A world of signs can be easily transmuted into the religious iconography of contemporary cargo cults. These new digital printworks offer up images and mechanisms of contemporary reproduction that parallel cargo cult phenomena. Images are often appropriated from popular graphic representation, or, from documentation of the artists Oakshuns presented as recontextualised and reconstituted rites.

Dense multi layered strategies, interconnected histories, factoids, embellished incidents, simulated anthropological concerns, colonised moments, implanted memories. Ethical, moral and cult[ural] recognition may be embedded in deception. The ' ...work of art often assumes the role of a trailer for a forthcoming event, or an event that is put off forever.