EXHIBITION - Leifs, 76 Vulture Street, West End.

February 23 - March 23, 2006.

PAX DISSIDENTA - Decolonise the Imagination

A Visual Arts Cabaret:

(IDentity (n): the relationship between an object and itself (subject) generally based on: race, nation, region, birthplace, gender, sexuality, fear, disability, class, wealth, possessions, education, ignorance, lifestyle, religion, philosophy, experience, family, occupation etc.)

An intimate and personal performance narrative designed to remove the distance (the fourth wall) between audience and artist (object and subject) . This distance then becomes a metaphor for the divided self, constructed and sustained through incessant labour with one or more concepts from the above incomplete list. This journey narrative would bridge the distance, reconciling the divided self to reveal the common source of all human identity, Being. In these pictures the tone is ironic, the use of the Australian continental shape as birth mark, or tatoo, gender ambiguity and black/white skins, highlight some of the indelible influences and their intrinsically political implications.

Identity politics and its divisive consequences continue to plague not only the wider world but artists, who could be striving to explore more universal ID modalities, relieving their constituents of the angst associated with the struggle to achieve the impossible. Too often the struggle becomes the point, and the purpose of the struggle, even if articulated, is lost.

Artist's Statement.

There's been something of a tradition since the 1960s for Western artists wanting to make political work to see a world in decline, a society so riven with inner conflicts and inequities that the form and the content of their work should mimic this dysfunction, this disintegration. This approach has been given many names among which 'anti-art' perhaps captures its intention most concisely.

"While the abandonment of the aesthetic form may well provide the most immediate, most direct mirror of a society in which subjects and objects are shattered, atomised, robbed of their words and images, the rejection of the aesthetic sublimation turns such work into bits and pieces of the very society whose anti-art they want to be. Anti-art is self-defeating from the outset." Herbert Marcuse.

Now well into the new millennium, I have chosen the eschew this self-defeating approach, preferring rather traditional painting skills, perhaps not unlike the pre- Raphaelites of the mid nineteenth century, in creating pictures pleasing to the eye whilst still loading the imagery with political content, as it's my deep conviction that art can offer an uplifting, transformative experience while at the same time ripping away the false consciousness of the dominant mind sets still confounding the world and its hapless inhabitants.

We know it's a beautiful place our world, we know it can kill us if we stray too far from the safety of the herd, when natural forces erupt or if we go too deep or sleep at the wheel.

But this vulnerable thing, what is it? What are we, and how are we made? Not the body, but the 'I' each of us refers to, our consciousness. Are we made in the image of some mythic god according to scripture? Or do we live in an anthropic universe where we make it all up ourselves, with some help from our ancestors, our friends and anyone to whom we choose to lend an ear? In this series of pictures, the viewer is asked to ponder the motives of nationalism, its big brother, imperialism, religion and a whole gaggle of minor ID crutches like race, gender, occupation and their associated ideologies as they seek to butt in and appropriate, shaping our identity to their own ends.