Stranger than Fiction presented a number works that reference sensory deprivation, the unearthing of memory, objects and history, where the audience is invited to build their own connections in confronting the void. All the artworks contributed to the wider themes of abstraction and storytelling.

Stella Brennan’s South Pacific (2007) plays with the links between technologies and making images from non-visual sources. Medical ultrasound and text are used to explore how the legacy of the Second World War changed not only the culture of the South Pacific region but our perception of oceanic space itself. Reviving a technique of early experimental ultrasound, which required the patient to be immersed in water, Brennan forms images exploring the interface between war, technology and perception.

South Pacific recalls stories of tropical lagoons littered with rusting ordnance and coral islands flattened for runways. A vast ocean is glimpsed by radar, video and ultrasound.