Laughing Kookaburra's
2024
spray paint, oil paint and crayon on
hand made paper, contains clothes drier lint and illegal leaf matter
A3 size,
private collection
available as print
"it is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right"
Henry Thoreau
Trolley
2024
oil paint and spray paint on board
Seditious Aspirations
2020
mixed media paint on canvas
91x 91cm
P.O.A (price on application)
Tasting Notes
“turkeys aren’t going to vote for Christmas”
Bernadette Devlin McAlisky
We are not amused by seditious aspiration.
We are, Law.
We are, Landlord and Noble.
We are, owner of dolphins and whales.
We are, eater of swans.
We are, majesty of the realm.
Disney’s finest
We are, Appointed by god
The fraudulent nature of civilisation is never more apparent than in its propaganda
The utter absurdity of imperialism’s majesty is somehow alien.
We are, jail yard label, dog.
We are, the royal wee.
We are, taking the piss.
Narrative Control
2020
mixed media paint, oils and resin on recycled commercial silk screen with aluminium frame
Tasting Notes:
The Disney animated film, ‘the little mermaid’ doesn’t hold up too well to critical examination, especially not once the pretty pictures and catchy show tunes are stripped back and the raw essence as moral instruction and education for children is the core purpose behind its brand of distraction
… much like the British royal family.
this is a painting of Disneys Ursula, a cheating villain whose most honest face I found on legal tender and whose staff of power is closed circuit television cameras
Love Me Tender
2018
acrylic, wood stain, oil paint on canvas
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
Legal Tender
Appointed by god and backing the currency
fee, fiefdom, foe, fund…
I smell the blood of the English
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” George Santayana
Bears Care
2019
mixed media, metallic tint, smoke stain, oil paint and resin on recycled plywood
29x 47cm
Private Collection
Two Wolves
2019
mixed media paint and resin on form ply
57x 60cm
Private Collection
Tasting Notes
This painting started as an off cut of formply, a gloss black plywood sheet used as moulding, for concrete. The blue and white layered up to a central blob, that with the application of grey and purple spray paint, slid aside to reveal hints of metallic copper.
It stopped there for quite a while, only an image of a white wolf kept jumping out at me, I still see it, purple nose, head slightly tilted…
I thought I’d make it more accessible, and turn it into a tribute to the film, ‘Princess Mononoke’.
This sits nicely alongside a painting from the same time, of the director, Hayao Miyasaki titled “the old man sees through it”
Sugar Pop Sex Myth,
part two
2021
oil paint and resin on melamine, recycled kitchen shelf
Don't Objectify The Dishwasher, they said.
2020
spray paint, oil paint and resin
on a recycled stainless steel dishwashing machine door
61x 59cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
As a chef, it was of paramount importance, to not take the dishwasher for granted.
The dish pig, most important job in the shop, is also how I started out in commercial kitchens.
I know, washing dishes when the machine breaks, especially in the middle of a busy service... it sucks, sometimes the dishwasher simply 'goes for a cigarette' never to return.
This piece is an ode to that, it is created on a stainless steel dishwashing door shroud, one that otherwise would have ended up in general purpose landfill.
Captain Morgan
2018
mixed media paint and resin on recycled plywood
90x 60cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
I’d learnt a few tricks when working in west oz and doing my apprenticeship with ‘uncle chip’. He told me, you can’t fight all the racists, it doesn’t work, you’ll wear yourself out…. if you really want to fuck them, tell them a story.
I was working in the Tanami desert, supposedly Australia’s most isolated mine, six hundred kilometres west of Alice springs, or if I missed the plane from Darwin, a two day drive, a decent amount of which was on dirt, with fuel stops charging between double and triple the price of diesel back in D town.
I’d only missed the flight once, it was first day back after a four month brake.
lucky for me Kingy saw the funny side and the pride of the fleet, ‘black loving’ was loaded up in town.
‘black lovin’ was an eighties series, Toyota landcruiser tray back Kingy had picked up, for a few grand, then painted matt black, before throwing on the necessary isolator, CV radio and other bullshit to make it mine spec’d and probably cost more than what he paid for the vehicle.
To this day I can’t figure out if it was a racist slur or not, ‘black lovin’ was, actually still is, probably the best vehicle I’ve ever driven… and it was somehow a total shitbox at the same time.
At the start and the end of each twelve hour day on that fourteen day swing we drove back and forth from camp to the actual mine which was seventy kilometres and took half an hour and the ascent and descent along a fourteen kilometre gravel track that went vertically down underground one kilometre, which could take anywhere between twenty minutes and two hours… the point being, I was spending a lot of time sitting in ‘black lovin’ and telling stories seemed like a good idea.
Gav was near enough to twice my size, a concrete formworker from queensland, he had a tattoo of a tall ship on one calf, it was really nice, surprisingly so for a jail tattoo. I told him the story of Captain Morgan, the bloke on the rum bottle, he was a real life character, imagine Usama Bin Laden if he wasn’t a fundamentalist dick and knew how to party… so basically a fan of slavery, a mass murder who drinks rum but doesn’t need absurd fairy tales to justify destruction and he sure as shit didn’t need his own death to justify raping virgins, he just liked to loot, pillage and plunder… because he could.
I thought by telling Gav this story I would be making a point about mining, turns out I was wrong. Gav wanted me to draw Captain Morgan so he could get it tattooed. I said no.
William Tell
(drone operatic)
2020
mixed media paint and resin on recycled plywood
90x 60cm
P.O.A
Tasting Notes
We are conditioned to emotionally respond, bobbing adrift in an endless sea of marketing and advertising that has risen to unprecedented levels of information flooding.
Constantly bombarded by stimulus that is surgically designed to elicit simple emotive response, so much so, that when it comes to dealing with intellectually complex issues, we are stripped of the facilities necessary to process the situation, sweep the sanity under the rug, bomb the bass and blanket the bomb, hoover basslines that hit with surgical precision, drone assurance you can trust.
The senses needed, to understand the situation and see it for what it is are burned out, held hostage, all that is left, conditions for base response.
Compromised impulse control.
There is an apple stuck to the son's head, who fathers the shot.
Anomie
2021
mixed media paint on masonite
125x 100cm
Tasting Notes
This painting works as both an aerial grid like map and a vertical interpretation of an urban landscape reduced to a two dimensional hot and cold, black and white, or in this case red and blue.
Anomie, in societies or individuals, a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals.
The term was introduced by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his study of suicide.
Respect Training
2021
oil paint on masonite
91x 122cm
P.O.A
Performative Outrage
Tasting Notes;
May Gibbs and the magical qualities of her anthropomorphic story telling are a delightful and innocent contrast to the Tiananmen Square protest.
The Prime Minister at the time, Bob Hawke was openly moved to tears by the tragedy and welcomed fleeing refugees as a result.
Australia has a long history of openly political racism towards the Chinese, both before and after this event.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise; the willingness to do business with China, with no regard for the health and well being of the Chinese people… if not surprising, I have to confess, I find it heartbreaking none the less.
Performative outrage is primarily, red, white and blue, flag colours, heavily textured, set alight and burnt a number of times.
The imagery transposed atop, a gumnut baby in yellow wattle flower and the tanks bearing down to trample the innocent blossom.