That's obvious! that's right! that's true!, the new installation by et al. for Christchurch Art Gallery, confounds as much as it elucidates questionable ideologies both past and present. For over twenty years et al. (a Latin abbreviation for ‘and others'), have produced films, sound works, books and installations that engage fragments of images, text and voices.

By investigating scientific experiments, religious belief systems, military and political beliefs and behaviour modification, et al. aim to disclose the insidious and nullifying effects of mass mind-control. Their controversial installation the fundamental practice, exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2005, was a cacophony of sound, moving metal units, fences and fragments of text that amplified the existence of opposites, discord and control inherent in each individual and in the wider world. the fundamental practice conveyed the collective's strategy of asserting no fixed narrative and instead employed dysfunctional and incoherent elements. As curator Mark Kremer wrote, ‘Something's rotten in the works of et al. An et al. exhibition presents the seething sediments of frenetic mental activity. Matter and mind are at odds; what's displayed is animated by deranged thought. Here reason breeds mania: we've entered the realm of omnipotent fantasy.'

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