12th - 20th Amendments

Full description

Background:
Artwork researches reciprocal relations between political cartoons and drawing in an expanded field of practice The work considers how verbo-pictorial metaphor aligned with performative drawing methods operates as political commentary. Framed by the political cartoons of Saul Steinberg (19640 New World (The Spiral), New Yorker Magazine, ‘Figure-Device’ works of Jasper Johns (1959), ‘Device Circle’, and the politics of social gesture in Barthes (1977) Diderot, Brecht and Eisenstein, Fontana, London.

Contribution:
11-20th Amendments' series of works investigates through a sequential methodology and the form of large works on paper of concentric watercolour rings, from each of which a trailing drop falls to a balsa wood ‘receiver’, perturbing those rings over which it passes.
The series is displayed as a single installation in which the experience of intensified colour and gesture imposes on the viewer a codified experience of the social tableau. The research develops ideas of blended metaphor by Elisabeth El Refaie (2003), Understanding visual metaphor: the example of newspaper cartoons, Sage Publications. Exhibition catalogue states ‘works might also be read metaphorically: the titles, … suggest a political reference to the subtle alteration or decay of an ideal’, McInnes & Barber (2017) Greg Creek Amendments

Significance:
Works were exhibited at Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne, as a curated exhibition of solo projects with Australian artists Kate Daw and Nadine Christensen. Catalogue states the exhibition thematic explores ‘issues of authorship, narrative and creative process… synchronising the personal, the political and the popular’ across a group of artist with International profiles. Sarah Scout Gallery develops opportunities for “outstanding early to mid-career artists… in a range of local and international situations” Artists include Bianca Hester, Lou Hubbard and Sally Smart.