Fish! Fish! fills the gallery with multitudes of lifelike carp from Shen Shaomin’s long-running series Chinese Carp. Made from silicone and electronics, they seem to breathe. The series began with news of carp overwhelming Australian rivers: introduced decades ago, the fish multiplied rapidly across the Murray-Darling Basin, prompting costly and often futile eradication schemes. In China, the same fish is highly prized. The word for “fish” sounds the same as the word for “surplus”, and a popular New Year greeting wishes abundance year after year. The carp also stands for perseverance and scholarly success, and in Daoist and Buddhist imagery, for freedom and spiritual liberation.

Like the species itself, Shen’s carp migrate and multiply from one setting to the next, their meaning shifting with each arrangement. Here, evoking festive abundance, the animated fish simulate life while erasing meaningful difference. The installation critiques systems in which conformity, mass production and algorithmic uniformity suppress individuality: abundance becomes spectacle, and replication replaces uniqueness. At its heart is a simple question: do you want to be a fish?

Presented in partnership by REDBASE and the Institute for Australian and Asian Arts and Culture, Western Sydney University