The group ‘I am Kloot’ have a song called ‘Proof’ (look,
it up)’ it begins with the lyrics
Hey, could you stand
another drink
I'm better when I don't think
It seems to get me through
Say, d'you wanna spin another line
Like we had a good time
Not that I need proof
I'm better when I don't think
It seems to get me through
Say, d'you wanna spin another line
Like we had a good time
Not that I need proof
It seems to me to say everything about the world I live in now,
it’s a world that is getting more abstract, more inept and visually
dysfunctional each month. With now no need to think or question anything spun
my way.
A form of devious electronic zealotry has invaded everything,
competing for all our cultural future, it’s nowhere close to how I imagined it
as a child, or even as a young adult. Granted, mine is a 1970s British childhood of slightly creepy
malevolence, with a certain menace lurking behind the neighbours curtains. But
it’s was also dreamy world of haunted rainy days spent indoors with a glorious technical
future of strange science, linked with a hangover of a post hippy, slightly
folky can do attitude, beamed by the TV into my subconscious.
But the blokes that run everything
(and let’s be honest its mainly blokes) now, seem to have taken an authority
position to new levels of ineptitude. Its key is to frown on any kind of knees
up, promoting a puritanical patriotic spirit, it’s in their interest to
tell us that our way of life is under threat, while keeping us all spending sometimes
on the internet while using inflammatory language and visuals, to keep us compliant.
It’s a
present my Australian self can’t fathom. A electronic proletariat is adding to
the static while looking for a bigger and bigger outrage, calling for the
banning of this and promoting the hating of that, all hidden behind an avatar
revealing the unpleasant individual behind an amiable exterior.
I usually spend hours composing something witty to say
about my paintings. But nobody is listening and why should they, we all have
shit to buy on eBay, and the blokes in blazer are promoting Australian values behind
flags.
I spend most of my time in complete bemusement. I am on a
different hemisphere of the globe from where I started, I am a long way from a
child of the 70s watching TV, I am bombarded by ineptitude and patriotism. Why
not paint people upside down on the beach. Buggered if I know what it’s all
about.
Gas Works Art Park August 10th 15