Exhibition 'Chad McCail: Liars of Earth' in Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art
Chad McCail’s monumental 100-foot long monochrome drawing is shown here for the first time in this country. Across a vast landscape that encompasses all of the institutions that shape us, McCail explores how we can combine forces to work together, and defeat those who would rule over us. His epic work asks how we might live together in the twenty-first century to share our resources more equally, and to create a new way of life.
‘Liars of Earth’ is an allegory of the way we live now: and of things to come. On the one side of a great divide are masked, robotic figures which have been commanding the landscape, exploiting its produce, and manipulating our labour, for their own gain. On the other side are massive mythical characters including a minotaur, a snake, and a “man of men”, a giant figure built of hundreds or thousands of individuals, all working together to defeat the robots and propose a new order.
The story resembles an updated, modern version of the print accompanying Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, in which during a crisis the entirety of the ‘body politic’ has to act as one. Only by working together can we build a world in which we can act towards a common good, and shape a world in which freedoms are secure. McCail’s work asks us to imagine other possible worlds in which we might unite to overcome the forces that remain aligned against us.