Eye Contact Chimera - Fergus NM

EYE CONTACT CHIMERA is a collection of images that were drawn, glued, painted, and otherwise alchemized onto paper by Fergus Nm, between 2023 and 2025. Each image presents a frozen second of a fascinating world teeming with activity, where every molecule dances and laughs. Over here are animals that act like plants, and plants disguised as animals; down there you can see the magicians swathed in their impossible robes, entangled in cosmic misadventure. Out from splatters of ink erupt architectural fungi, and birds both exotic and mundane roost everywhere.

Fergus Nm merges gleefully warped linework with a barely-controlled-chaos approach to collage to create these gardens of retinal delight. Each piece uses inks, pencils, and paints, along with snippets sliced from advertising ephemera and outdated encyclopedias, to assemble buzzing constellations of colour and wonder. The works in EYE CONTACT CHIMERA can be confounding, but curious viewers who stare through the confusion are rewarded with an abundance of chaotic visual joys.

Fergus Nm (b. 1991, he/him) is an artist, publisher, reader, and writer, based in Newtown, Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Since 2021 he has run the small press Venomous Feathers, sporadic publisher of retinal delights from Aotearoa and beyond. His own art and writing has appeared in publications from Aotearoa, Chile, Denmark, the U. K., and elsewhere. Since his teens he has performed in many bands and musical projects spanning the experimental and extreme music spectrums, most recently with the corrosive melancholic noise of project NNNC. EYE CONTACT CHIMERA is his first public exhibition of visual art.
 

Eye Contact Chimera opens on Rāpare (Thurs) 5th June 6-8PM, with an artist talk by Fergus Nm.