DIE ANDERAN
(The Others)
Colonial artwork looms large in the visual history of Australia. For the past 100 years every school child has endured a scholastic diet of the dominant Anglo-Celtic way of seeing. Although the original paintings are seen often they are for the most part taken for granted. Childhood thoughts, events, social history, fanciful fables, clear perceptions and blurred misconceptions present themselves in their reinvention.
A print of a painting within a sculpture within a photograph of a child as a doll within a portrait of the artist as a child is as convoluted to write, as these reinventions are as complex to construct. They live beyond their enforced Colonial gallery settings through the reinvention of the viewer. In them we find repose.
And maybe, just maybe, they’re a little bit funny. But no laughing please, this is art.
after Augustus Earle’s ‘Boy with sulphur-crested cockatoo’ (1826), Art Gallery of South Australia
88×75 cm unframed
‘Silly Domini (the immaculate conception comes out of the shadows)’
after Rupert Bunny’s ‘Ancilla Domini’ (1896), Art Gallery of South Australia
75×75 cm
‘The Colonel & The Toad (porcelain ducks for everyone)’
after Colonel William Light’s ‘self portrait’ (c1815) AGSA, Adelaide
88 x 75cm
‘Circe Insidiosa (the wolf’s at the door)’
after JW Waterhouse’s ‘Circe Invidiosa’ (1892), Art Gallery of South Australia
75×75 cm
‘The Chicken Sexer of Delphi (oracles are made to be broken)’
after John Collier’s ‘Priestess of Delphi’ (1891), Art Gallery of South Australia
75×45 cm
after Thomas Bock’s Eliza Langhorne (1849), Art Gallery of South Australia
88×75 cm
‘Game for a laugh (pop go the weasels)’
after W.B. Gould’s Still life with game (c1840), Art Gallery of South Australia
88×75 cm
‘Spirit of the Doubt (follow the yellowy road)’
after Arthur Streeton’s ‘Spirit of the Drought’ (c.1895) NGA, Canberra
34 x 55cm
‘Do You Believe in Magic? (a hot wind is gonna’ blow)’
after Charles Conder’s ‘Hot Wind’ (1889) NGA, Canberra
34 x 58cm
‘Dear Fatma (no body nose the trouble I’ve seen)’
after Arthur Streeton’s ‘Fatma Habiba’ (1897) AGSA, Adelaide
23 x 25cm
