“Hayden Fowler is a New Zealand born Sydney based artist who works across installation, performance and video art. Fowler’s works often feature animals and humans interacting with one another within science fiction environments. In Goat odyssey 2006, Fowler makes a comment on the absurdity and lack of meaningfulness in contemporary life. He explains: “In Goat odyssey there are these white goats seen in a vacuum-sealed environment … The camera just goes endlessly around and the goats are clean and elaborately dressed, but they’re just walking in circles. There is a sense of repetition and boredom and a lack of opportunity for anything else. I was using the goats as metaphors for us.”*

Fowler’s work is also held in the collections of Artbank, the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dubbo Regional Art Gallery and RMIT University Art Collection.

Hayden Fowler’s video work ‘Goat odyssey’ was a gift of Anita and Luca Belgiorno-Nettis to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2017. 

*Hayden Fowler quoted in Andrew Frost, Another Future: Hayden Fowler’s alternative nature_www.sturgeonmagazine.com.au.