Page 45 Review by Stephen
I don't know, is the answer. I don't know what's going on except that it's quite the experience.
Anything this abstract is open to interpretation, and I have no crib sheet to copy from. I never do and never will and I truly wouldn't want one.
I love experiencing new art for myself. That's something I touched upon sarcastically in my review of ANCESTOR wherein technology has evolved to render everyone all-informed. That too will give you much pause for thought.
I found this thrilling. In spite of the chaos of the full-colour cover, this black and white orgy of interlocking forms strikes me as highly disciplined. It doesn't look random at all.
It's like a carefully choreographed ballet as performed by crisply delineated yet thoroughly malleable, constantly morphing techno-organic entities whose forms appear to coil round each other, perhaps merge then separate.
None of the images I have for you here are consecutive and, with hindsight, that might have been an error on my part for it's all about sequence. Nor is each dance brief, so the result is a rightfully indulgent, extended eye-bath and I promise you that seeing is believing: you really do need to pick up a physical copy from our shelves for yourselves and decide what you make of it.
Are those individuals in space-suit armour crouching in a simian fashion, awaiting orders from the taller one to the left?
I simply don't know.
Just over halfway through there appears to be a blinding light eroding these forms during which Hopkins demonstrates a superb sense of negative space before a robed, monocular individual rises and strides, best foot forward into the foreground (possibly), after which darkness descends and the formerly stark art is splashed with swathes of sweeping black ink and - to me - a lone survivor emerges to sit on a large cushion tapping into its laptop.
This has no words.
I have no words.
If I was any more egomaniacal than I already am, I would swear blind that this was created purely to make monkeys out of reviewers, Gareth A. Hopkins chortling in private at our flailing public attempts to do justice to what was for me a so-far unique experience. I suspect I have just taken a Rorschach Test.
It's very beautiful. Let's leave it at that.
