Proposition for a panorama towards the northern top (Yield) is a finalist in the prestigious Sulman Prize 2016, opening at the Art Gallery of NSW, opening Friday 15th July.
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/sulman/2016/29782/
Proposition for a Panorama Towards the Northern Tops (Yield) acrylic paint, pencil, UV cured digital print, fibreglass mesh, feathers, thread on linen 174 x 172 cm, 2016.
This work is part of an ongoing line of enquiry looking loosely at the contemporary urban landscape and incorporating a series of ongoing themes of interest- power nodes and landscape of ‘the city’, the gendered performance of capitalism, and propositionally ascribing elements of the shamanic and dark magic to the apparently rational ‘economy’.
This work, Proposition for a panorama towards the northern top (Yield) , 2016, takes as its pivot point the famous nineteenth century painting ‘North-east view from the northern top of Mount Kosciusko’ by Eugene von Guérard, and reworks a segment using digital and physical collage with paint, pencil, fiberglass mesh and feathers. This point of reference to the history of sublime landscape in Euro-colonial art is used to look at the opaque nexus of land ownership, power and money in the city.
This work interweave references to the current Australian apartment boom, contestability of publicly owned land and ideas around how the economy is ‘performed’, along with (shamanically) theatrical black feathers, ribbon and mesh. The text ‘yield’ intentionally refers to both economic returns and an act of penitent (and almost Biblical) submission- offering a proposition for their dissonant meaning in the battle for land, money and power.
