SCULPTURE, PRINTMAKING, DRAWING
Following Orders (Graffitied), does not engage in political discussions or make calls to protest against violence, it cannot change anything or our nature; it’s simply a monument to our legacy of annihilating each other in defence of territorial pissings, people control, power pursuits and assumed rights to domination.
Just as the original Romulus and Remus sculpture aims to give substance to the myth of the birth of the Roman Empire, Romulus and Remus Reprised aims to give substance to the birth of the screen which has awoken our collective unconscious stare into the glow of ancestral fires. The screen and its hypnotising glow are yielding new frontiers, new strategies of people control and people management through numbing addictions, all of which help steer a select few into unforeseen wealth and new global Empires. Romulus and Remus Reprised aims to start conversations of the relevance and impact of the screen in modern existence.
In case you were thinking of contacting me with concerns about this drawing, read the artist statement first- This drawing is partly autobiographical and also an outlook on life as a complex union between violence, conflict, desire, delusions and repression. Based on a real event, the foreground scene took place on a walk with my mother, sister and myself, days after migrating from Malta to Melbourne. People threw stones and yelled obscenities at us, hence the title. Factories and a silo feature since they are among many of the dehumanising places where I worked. There were little expectations back then, life was tough, we had very little money and I was expected to go to work, anywhere, as long as I earned money. The Sydney based buildings reflect my move and new beginning while the billboards reflect dreams sold to us by the owners of the means of production, but in reality, they are of figures in bondage, no dreams, just illusions swaying us to consume and become enslaved to debt. But sex and wild fantasies dominate our lives and, like the bent chimneys, limp and resembling upside down legs, they and the billboards, reflect repressed libidinal desires in order to create, an overcrowded city and superfluous cars no less and in the end, more delusions and illusions.
Inspired by Edward Hopper's painting and bearing the same name, Early Sunday Morning is a composition of individually cut out royalty free images. Unlike Hopper's quiet work, this collage is loud and a cacophony of colour, competing signs, billboards, cars and structures. All signs of life are on billboards, everywhere else is just evidence of human activity. There's no soul, just an affirmation of the self through a jostling of space, repetition and lures to consumption.
