This exhibition began with a shared curiosity: how might our individual practices converge and express within the space between them? We found a guiding metaphor in the phrase “blooming, buzzing confusion,” coined by psychologist William James to describe the newborn’s first encounter with the world—a vibrant, unfiltered sensory flood.
Collaboration, in many ways, is an allegory of this beginning again. It asks us to step outside the familiar and fold into a space shaped by both perspectives—sharing a frequency, sitting with the intelligence of another’s hands and heart, shifting attention outside of the self, into the unknown.
These works arrived after a two-year long conversation sharing archives and sketchbooks, swapping notes and references, offering drawings up for remix and reclamation and, eventually, challenging our own notions of ownership by borrowing, reworking, blending our visual language. They meet at the heart of our two practices and speak to the ways that we organise the chaos of the world through curiosity and playfulness—looking closely to find small moments that crack open to reveal treasures both familiar and mysterious.
Blooming And Buzzing Confusion is a celebration of sensory excess and imaginative construction—a vibrant blur of form and feeling. We hope it reflects the feverish joy of meaning-making, and the way our distinct worlds inform, challenge, and illuminate one another.
click here for more of Carla’s beautiful work
studio visit photos by Savannah Van Der Niet
BOOM gallery photos by Carli Wilson
