Myopia ³ = The Elephant in the Room – 2015
Group exhibition — Call + Response – April 2016 at Orange Regional Gallery – NSW.
Oil on three conjoined canvasses – Overall largest dimensions: 106 x 142
A response to Alan Peascod’s Myopia II – By Victor Gordon
Anecdotal evidence of a very personal bureaucratic social injustice was purportedly Peascod’s reason d’être for this whimsical ceramic, reminiscent of a carved ivory on an ebony-like stand. Whether this was indeed factual or not, I was inspired to highlight wider pressing national social issues. Important issues which are glossed over, if not purposefully avoided and seldom addressed in our nationalistic desire to sustain a mythic hedonistic Good Life here in Australia. A shaped canvas creates the amplified illusion of a three dimensional cubed room. Within, an exquisite Saracenic pattern forms a wallpaper-like backdrop, derived from the Alhambra in Grenada. Positioned stage centre, a juvenile (somewhat vulnerable) elephant discreetly adorned with Aboriginal colours (as a Hindu Bindi) stands atop a large scale ice block which is visibly melting.
These three social myopias are the crux of the work. Successive sycophantic crusading by bi-partisan governments, the media and the military has resulted in a demonizing of Muslims here in Australia and abroad and has created an unwelcome social divide in what was on track to being an exemplar of a successful multi-cultural Australia. The reference to our incipient racism in the culturally rich fabric forms the social backdrop for the central myopic figure, an elephant discreetly adorned with aboriginal associated colours. The urgent need to address the amnesic inequity between mainstream and first nation peoples of Australia hovers like a low slung cloud of bad Karma over the nation (not to mention the hovering Black Hole). And, the persistent greed-driven exploitation of resources and an ostrich head-in-the sand attitude to human-induced climate change all make for a smorgasbord of National short-sighted myopias.
Revealed, the contents of the open-ended box can conceivably also represent (a selection of) contemporary evils as related in the myth of Pandora, imminently to be unleashed onto the National and World stage.
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