Endless is an atmospheric installation and looping film work that explores Aotearoa’s reliance on phosphate rock from occupied Western Sahara.
While living in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Matthew Galloway saw the same view of Otago Harbour every evening. Across the water, a plume of smoke rises from the chimney of the Ravensdown Factory as the sun sets. This factory processes phosphate rock into the fertiliser used to make our agriculture industry more productive. However, in order to make this crucial product, Aotearoa is currently reliant on imports of phosphate rock from occupied Western Sahara. By purchasing this rock, we are helping fund Morocco’s brutal occupation of this territory, where those indigenous to Western Sahara are either heavily persecuted within the occupied zone, or live in Algerian refugee camps.
Endless seeks to recreate this view as a looped video showing the chimney stack in a state of endless production. Its two screens are mirror images of one another, with smoke and many gulls gliding on the wind in opposite directions.
For the work's exhibition at Te Tuhi in 2022, semi-opaque flags were hung over the windows, transforming the space into a state of permanent dusk. Galloway also worked with Mohamed Sleiman Labat—a visual artist and poet based in the Sahrawi Refugee Camps—to adapt elements of his film Desert Strawberries into a sound work that filled the foyer. This work features a recording of Sleiman Labat’s father speaking in Hassanya, dispersing memories of nomadic life in Western Sahara before the Moroccan invasion (1975) amongst contemporary descriptions of the 'family gardens' now being grown in the Sahrawi Refugee camps where they live.
Sleiman Labat and Galloway first met in the Sahrawi Refugee Camps in 2016, and have had an ongoing correspondence in the years since.
— text adapted from Te Tuhi, 2022
