A selection of exhibited work.
Everything must go!
When everything has a price, everything is for sale. In reality your life is worth little unless you're part of a business structure. In a capitalist society you are worth only your job: The more easily replaced you are, the cheaper your life.
Besides, we've entered a Plutocracy phase of capitalism where money defines success, not skill, ideas or market value. Until you start work you're worth what your parents are. The UK has the worst Social Mobility in the developed world, Italy second, the US third despite their bullshit of you can be anything.
Might
I guess this is about my problem with certain religious people, not so much the religions themselves. The dissonance between what they preach and what they practice - what their religion asks of them and what they choose to follow. The Buddha used to represent wealth, well fed and decked in gold, it is an icon that would attract money. But a gun is now the unofficial way of business and with a gun you can take anything.
Dubai
The PetroDollar and its hold over us all. The last 100 years of human development have relied almost totally on oil and now we face a world without it and need to think beyond it. The main obstacles to evolving beyond our dependence on oil are the major corporations and their ownership of politicians. Stifling dissent and hiding the truth of climate change behind outright lies, manufactured to keep us as junkies to their drug.
Peak
“Peak oil, is the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline.” Most experts agree that this event has already passed.
In Memoriam
These cement longneck bottles, wrapped in their ubiquitous paper bags, are memorials to lives (and money) pissed away.
Lest we remember
Australia has a real alcoholic culture - sanctioned (and taxed) by the state. Cheap and in large volume you can obliterate yourself and your life.
CIA Sniper of the Year Award – 1963
Because it was a damned fine shot, a damned fine misdirection and a damned fine getaway. Perfect sniping.
Medals for the Armchair General
Every 'armchair warrior' needs some self-awarded medals of fictional-valour. For bravery in the face of non-existent odds, for heroically facing down computer game enemies and holding out for the entire length of any war film. Always bravest when safely tucked up in his own home.
My brothers keeper
A reworking and updating of the Australian beach bloke, the surfie, the national idol. Taking the almost nationalistic 1940's Chesty Bonds mannequin and dragging him into modern beach culture.
Fake
So obviously fake but perfectly fake. Obviously, perfectly fake.
GROW UP
Boys toys, toys for big boys.
For that man that can’t grow up. The manchild that can’t face adulthood head on, that still collects comics and toys. These acts seek to legitimize their inability to be their fathers and subconsciously seek to solve childhood issues. Or maybe they just want to avoid the present.
The Drone Medal
Finally, a medal to honour the operators of drones overseas. The Drone Medal aka 'the Babykiller'. For those that daily risk eye damage from squinting at monitors and RSI from pressing buttons to kill people that might not be civilians.
"The Distinguished Warfare Medal was a planned United States military decoration announced by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on 13 February 2013. It would have been the first American combat-related award to be created since the Bronze Star Medal in 1944. It was intended to recognize military achievement in cyberwarfare or combat drone operations for actions that did not include valor in combat."
‘I love the smell of street art…’
Silkscreen print
Drink to get drunk
Because when you're buying cheap alcohol in bulk that's all you doing, the question is why do you have to get that way when there are so many good drugs around?
Etc.Etc
Nickel-plated bronze.
MAN-MADE
Gloves for man-made substances, the most toxic substances known to man.
Laissez Faire
This is a sort of memorial & celebration of true capitalists: bank robbers. These are the true capitalists, the epitome of real laissez-faire capitalism. Hostile takeovers, short term/high risk investors & the ultimate in self-regulating industries. They do not require, or ask for, bail-outs when times get tough. They only get paid for working & they don't consider themselves a class above the rest.
Maybe we should erect statues to the real heroes, the ones that took the greatest risks, more 'heroic' than any of our sporting 'heroes'. There is one a set of rules that apply to all, but justice is served for two separate groups. A banker can steal millions & get a year or two in jail whilst an armed robber gets ten to fifteen years for stealing a few thousand. Who's the true capitalist?
Parthenon piece
ANZAC II (RSL)
Coincidentally the Australian $100 note has (General) Monash on it. Australia's most famous officer, responsible for the ANZACs victory at Amiens in WWI that directly led to the end of the war. RSLs celebrate Gallipoli as it keeps ANZACs victims. Perfect for them as no one questions a victim and gives them underdog status.
ANZAC II (RSL)
All part of my issue with RSLs and their profiting at the expense of Australian soldiers, dead and alive.
The ANZAC is based on a 1:32 scale toy soldier so he's never an ANZAC really, he's a toy soldier. The coins on the eyes (heads and tails sides) stand for 'two-up' as well as classical payment to the ferryman. The $100 note across the mouth symbolises big business and how it silences the reality of ANZACs. He’s a gagged symbol owned by big money. It also represents the money fed into pokie machines.
Parthenon Piece II: never was
Building ruins of sculptures that never existed.
Building ruins of sculptures that never existed.
My grandfather sculpted toy soldiers. He represented the end of an era, the end of a line of classically trained skilled artists leaving art colleges. When they made toy soldiers they poured all their knowledge of great classical art into them. All their knowledge of composition, form and movement.
This is not an ANZAC (RSL)
Life size Australian ANZAC toy soldier...in a tutu. This is not an ANZAC - it's a giant toy soldier. It's not even a toy soldier - it’s a sculpture against the misuse of national heroes and legends usually by money grabbing corporations and fear mongering politicians. Is it offensive because I put a skirt on an ANZAC? It's NOT an ANZAC!
Property
The basics of war is the seizure of property, goods, resources or people. It may be as much now as it was when Mongols and Vikings raped and pillaged their way around the world, as dying empires become increasingly desperate and violent in their desire to be the owners and distributors of oil.
As a soldier you may be an individual but you are property used to steal more property and your value is dependent on what you are being sacrificed for.
As a soldier you may be an individual but you are property used to steal more property & your value is dependent on what you are being sacrificed for.
AK-double
‘Mad AK’
The double ended AK47s; the modern concept of Mutually Assured Destruction.
From the May 2014 show at Art Equity.
Illuminated ‘Mad AK’
From the 'Death Wish' show at Brenda May Gallery 2013
‘Guns for wannabe gangsters’ (Guns R Us II)
Guns R Us, cockguns in Fisher Price colours!
Different coloured gelcoat resins.
Guns R Us Mk.
Happy guns for happily killing happy people. Turn that frown upside down, or at least turn their head inside out. Using Mickey Mouse is too easy, too unsubtle, but I had to do it! 🙂
MAD
The 1950's-1980's Cold War philosophy of M.A.D. nuclear weapons, a true story of stupidity on behalf of the people, duels for fools.
Victim
‘First World Food’ with ‘Large lies’
Because you know it's shit. It lacks nutrition and is mostly fat, air, sugar and carbs. Because this represents the height of our civilisation, Shit food made by people on shit pay that fucks your health. Do you want fries with that?
Sweet tooth
In Bronze. With thanks to Coates & Wood Foundry.
Finite
Infinite is endless, finite has a definite end. Most of the products you buy, the white goods, have built-in obsolescence. Sometimes only a few years, sometimes less. If your tangible objects are built and bought to be replaced then why doesn’t that apply to all the intangible elements in your life - your friends, your relationships, your family?
Capitalism created consumerism to produce a supposedly ever expanding market. Why sell an item to a customer once when you can sell them an inferior version several times throughout their lives? The idea of consumerism is infinite. A constantly growing market with endless resources. Yet our planet and the resources on it are far from endless.
Burden & Memories
Would you be able to fit everything important to you in a suitcase? Would you be able to pack and carry everything that has sentimental value to you? Do you value the sentimental over the monetary value? Do you have your priorities right? Maybe the best way is to travel in life is light.
Art wank
An art work that tries to describe itself in the worst possible way, reducing itself to the lowest level of art-less art theory. The more this piece describes itself, the more it sinks into a meaningless paragraph, sentencing itself to oblivion.
An art work that tries to describe itself in the worst possible way, reducing itself to the lowest level of art-less art theory. The more this piece describes itself, the more it sinks into a meaningless paragraph. Sentencing itself to oblivion.
It is of the language used by members of any number of publicly-funded, self-serving arts groups, charities for voyeurs that can neither be artists or critics.
