On the night of 19 September 1961, Barney and Betty Hill were driving through rural New Hampshire when they observed a mysterious craft with flashing lights flying toward them. Hours later, they came to in a different location, with strange injuries and fragmented memories. They went on to experience nightmares about extraterrestrial examinations. The couple became the US’s first widely publicised alien-abduction case. The Hills undertook years of psychiatric assessments to prove their story. During hypnosis sessions, Barney would repeatedly describe the mesmerising effect of the alien eyes: ‘Always … the eyes are there!’

For his 2016 installation The Eyes Are Always There, Los Angeles artist Joe Merrell paired a recording from a hypnosis session with the Hills with a trance-like animation of a giant eye. He also collaborated with Saskia Wilson-Brown to create Abduction, a scent based on the odours alien abductees reported smelling during their abduction experiences. Both works feature in The Truth Is Out There at Lower Hutt’s Dowse Art Museum.

Curated by Chelsea Nichols, the show explores artists’ fascination with UFOs, alien abductions, and other unexplained phenomena. With a touch of nostalgia for X-Files-era conspiracy theories, it grapples with larger questions of misinformation, credibility, and truth.

Why now? ‘Conspiracy theories, mis- information, and paranoia pervade modern society and the belief in extraterrestrial life is more mainstream than ever’, Nichols explains. ‘Only last year, the US Congress ordered the Pentagon to release all of its official knowledge of UFOs, making this topic as relevant today as it was in the cold-war era.’

The Truth Is Out There also features locals Caryline Boreham, Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena, Emil McAvoy, Peter Stichbury, and Ronnie Van Hout, plus Hany Armanious (Australia) and Nayda Collazo-Llorens (US).