48 Painted Panels, 2023, Oil Paint on panel, supported on an A-Frame
This work comprises forty-eight individual images. The paintings depict anonymous men who represent the underlying system of our society, including politics, corporate boardrooms, private businesses, and offices. It’s worth noting that the individuals responsible for making significant decisions may be kept from the public. Men in suits are a metaphor for a male-dominated workplace culture as the norm and putting a face on power. I am using a nuanced work that uses images and words to point to the broader contextual and ‘environmental’ forces under which our landscape, the Murray Darling Basin, functions, and the underlying texts support a snapshot of my thinking. An A-frame supports the forty-eight painted panels as a semiotic index on a written and painted surface.
The ‘film still’ is taken into a moving image, and through animation, I can positively portray the movement of matter. The challenges of the MDB allow the energy to question the traditional ideas of agency and break down the binary distinctions between life and stillness, humans and non-humans, organic and inorganic, and water and power. I aim to encourage the audience to be more open to the aesthetic and emotional impact of the images.
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This project delves into the critical issue of environmental degradation within the Murray Darling River system, examining the multifaceted relationship between water, the Australian landscape, capitalism, and environmental adversity. This work sheds light on the profound implications of water representation in this region. Water, an essential element for life, knows no geographical boundaries, transcending artificial divisions.