Business as Usual – A Day at the Office – 2007

Mixed media: Camouflaged recycled frame with convex glass
H43 x W58.6 cm

This painting raises questions concerning Australian complicity in the suspension of humanitarian values at the behest of America, as part of the “alliance of the willing”. It makes an oblique but decipherable reference to the deployment of torture – in the war on international terrorism. The irony is obvious. The camouflaged oval format is eye-shaped and the inclusion of the central black dot acts as the pupil. By extension I am positioning you the viewer, as a witness to the (undetermined) torture being perpetrated on the person with a bucket over their head in the image. The bucket carries the ubiquitous commercially patriotic “Made in Australia” logo.