Image Credit: Jack Hodges, Still from People’s Choice, 2025, Image courtesy of Artist.
People’s Choice
Jack Hodges
Content Warning: This video contains discussion around domestic violence. If you find this topic distressing, please take care while engaging, and feel free to step away if needed.
roomsheet
In an era of increasing polarisation, political, cultural, social, and economic, a question arises: why don’t those seeking genuine change engage more with those who think differently? People often voice their beliefs within familiar circles, both online and in person, reinforcing opposition rather than encouraging understanding.
People’s Choice is an attempt at the public use of reason, engaging with diverse viewpoints to strengthen understanding and prevent intellectual stagnation. By facilitating conversations with strangers, the project seeks to counteract deepening divides. Through problem-posing questions, it examines the inherent structures of thought, not as barriers but as challenges to remain humble in knowledge and open to multiple interpretations.
Gary the Dolphin, a laid-back human-porpoise hybrid, embodies the existential paradox of freedom. As a silent witness to deeply held assumptions, he serves as a medium for collective reasoning. Straddling different realities, land and sea, he reflects the contrasts between urban and rural experiences of autonomy. For someone who has never left Nambucca Heads, how might these conversations shape his identity? Is he searching for something, or is the process itself the purpose?
Gary’s car, a wrecked Ferrari stands as a monument to the illusion of freedom and the fragility of control. A symbol of status, excess, and speed is re-imagined as a ruin, a collision of desire and consequence. Does one truly steer their own life, or are they being driven in directions out of ones control? Together, these works interrogate the structures that define status, autonomy, and the boundaries of choice, inviting the public to reflect on the forces shaping everyday decisions.
Thank you to all the participants for sharing your perspectives and driving the narrative in this project.
Thank you also to Alejandra Ramirez, Mo Satanik, Hamish Ames, Sharyn Brady, Kyle Connolly and Mark Seagrim for helping bring this project to life.