Exhibition

William Eakin: Have a Nice Day

12 January – 25 February, 2001

Have a Nice Day is a selection of William Eakin's photographs that explores contemporary society's obsession with UFOs, aliens, and extraterrestrial phenomena. Produced over a ten-year period, the photo-installation contains 30 large-scale images, representing several distinct bodies of work. These include Eakin's UFO sighting pictures, alien portraits, alien tableaux, and cryptic photo-collages. Eakin's photographs are factitious-- a subtle mix of fact and fiction-- that deconstructs the alien myth in search of the socio-cultural meanings of our obsession.

Eakin began his investigation into the alien myth in 1991, with a series of UFO sighting pictures. Inspired by grainy, black and white snapshots published in a UFO book, Eakin set out with a box of day-old donuts and assorted saucer-shaped kitchenware to make his own photographs of "unidentified flying objects." Eakin's deadpan images not only mock the scientific "truth" manufactured by science fiction magazines and supermarket tabloid, they also draw attention to our collective self-deception that perpetuates the alien myth.