Nick Sherratt
Ray Guns
30 August to 4 October 2025
Opening Party: Saturday 6 September 3 to 8pm
"There’s a line in a Mike Harding song I’ve never forgotten. It’s a kid listing all the things adults warn him not to do or the Bogey Man will come get him… playing on the grids, swallowing chewing gum, treading on cracks in the pavement, looking in mirrors. And then he says:
“So when I grows up and I get right big I’ll play on every grid I can, I’ll swallow all the chewing gum I can, I’ll look in every mirror that I can, and tread on every nick I can, and then if the Bogey Man comes... I’ll kill the bugger. With a supersonic raygun that I’m going to make when I grows up.”
Now I’m grown up, and I make ray guns… Not the slick kind you’d see in a film, but cobbled together from junk… the stuff people throw away. They’re weapons, yes, but not for hurting. They’re tools for coping. For protecting. From what exactly? Life, maybe. Loss. Uncertainty. That lurking sense that everything can change in a second.
When I was a kid, both my parents died. It was like my childhood was taken… not gradually, but all at once. And since then, I’ve lived with this quiet understanding that plans don’t always work out. That safety is something you have to imagine for yourself. So I build these ray guns. They’re make-believe, but they mean something real. They’re what I would have made as a kid, if I’d had the time. They’re what I still need now.”
- Nick Sherratt