Hurt Chain, 2025 is an installation comprising 19 small, sculptural grotesques. These hybrid zoological forms weave a circular narrative, evoking a food chain where survival takes a backseat to violent gratification, rampant consumption, and psychological self-destruction. You know, the fun stuff. For the visitor, the act of looking at the work has been designed to simultaneously stimulate the childhood wonder of a zoo exhibit and the voyeuristic disobedience of a late-night peep show. Each individual sculpture over consumes its exhibition space. It presses against the walls, blocks its lighting, or pops out of its gallery pants. Greed abounds and pain ensues. Hurt Chain explores the comfort or discomfort of knowingly and inevitably causing pain to the self or to others. The sculptures interact negatively with each other, connected by tenuous and absurd visual cues for the viewer to deduce. Birds and beasts combine to eat or be eaten; capape foods escape or invade orifices; snails engulf slugs, and bananas disrobe. Meanwhile, the human form, ever-present or implied, imposes its guilty fat and shameful crevices onto all. Mel Hartigan is a visual artist and arts professional living and working on the unceded lands of Naarm/Melbourne. Mel’s practice includes drawing, copperplate etching, sculpture and animation. Mel draws visual inspiration from the body, flora, fauna, food, and 80’s practical special FX. Their work often includes creatures in distress or discomfort, with surreal, sculptural bodies that disregard proportion. Mel’s art is thematically shaped by psychological patterns of behaviour, social satire and visual gameplay. They explore ideas surrounding gender, shame, death, mundanity and ugliness. Mel employs numerous juxtapositions to create art that both delights and disgusts. There is always one foot in highbrow, the other foot in lowbrow, and an electric fence of pointlessness dangerously wavering in the centre.