1.43 pm

and next time i'll post the other side of this one. It's a bit depressing.

painted on half a curtain.

PurpleMonkeyDishwasher

This series was created a couple of years ago. It is not finished yet although I haven't worked on any since December 2004.

There are two characters, Dambudzo Marechera, a poet, and myself as the Blackeyed Angel. Each painting is done in oils with the exception of one done in pencil crayon, and all are double sided. That is, each work has another work on the back. The idea was to have them suspended from the ceiling so people could walk around them in a room and look at them as one would sculptures. The effect would be similar to regarding (INterESting) washing on a line.

It is difficult to be an artist in Australia. Or anywhere other than London or New York or major European cities. The ground covered within art theory and thought throughout the twentieth century, would render any creation made here, useless. (For a start, where is the critical audience who, aware of the ground broken in artistic practice and thought by B's such as Beuys and Baudrillard, will have the highest standards and the utmost appreciation when regarding any new artwork, visual or mental?)

Yet to pursue the aims (within a practical medium) of whispered, second-hand theories from overseas, theories which have become as mutable as fashion, is futile. I might as well go and dress up like Grace Kelly and parade around my bedroom taking photos of myself. Hang on.... No wait, Cindy Sherman's already done that.

words

'stories' is based upon a short story by Dambudzo Marechera which appears within his first publication, The House Of Hunger (1978). The piece is painted upon mdf board using oil paint. Beneath it lies one of the first paintings of the Blackeyed Angel. These were all executed using Giotto blue as the background colour. There are theoretical reasons for the use of this colour; namely a question of heritage. Are the white colonials and their descendants permitted to tell the story of Black Africa? If not, what artistic territory can they traverse?

stories