Cockfighter's Ghost
Alex Hobba
16 Aug–9 Sep 2023
Cockfighter’s Ghost is a mimicry of the generic biographical documentary feature film, particularly the narrative technique that haunts this genre. After viewing enough of these films (especially those of artists), a template becomes apparent which seems unintentionally absurd in its blind repetition. The cock within Cockfighter’s Ghost is not really a standard character at all, rather an organizational device which permits me to network a number of different areas of research I am commencing regarding the domestic chicken, the Gallus gallus domesticus, from its representation in film and literature to its position as a food staple.
The posthumous biographical documentary on the life of a rooster who gained international fame from professional fighting.
Alex Hobba (she/her) is an artist living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. Hobba’s interdisciplinary practice brings together the written word, photography, 3d rendered inkjet prints, video and installation. Her projects dissect and interrogate quotidian experience and the ways that language operates in everyday use as representation, categorisation, and communication. Drawing on stories from a range of performative modes, including cinema, theatre and literature, Hobba’s practice tests notions of affect and flatness as they apply to the performative experience of language and narrative.