She Writhes in the Heart of the City of Mud – 2026
Oil on canvas. H101 x W76 cm
The architectural edifice is Callan Park, Rozelle, Sydney – originally the home of the deemed insane and, having undergone a metamorphosis became Sydney University’s Sydney College The Arts – SCA (when the artist was acquainted with it) in the Nineties.
Access to the art school is here blocked. The strong oversized white figure within the arch is bounded by a dark black beyond which establishes a vivid contrast. This is further enhanced by the maroon/purple inner wall of the arch. The nude figure is a drawing derived from a fragment of La Source by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres of 1860. Visually leading to the well-known historical figure blocking the archway/entrance of the art school/lunatic asylum is a hazard-coloured chevron/Zebra crossing. To the left and right of this formal pathway is rich green erzatz astro-turf. Above the entrance are carved the words “Nur Jedem das seine” – A German phrase meaning: “Only to each his own”. This motto was positioned above the entrance to the BUchenwald Nazi concentration Camp. (It appeared in traditional German as a respected phrase and is attributed to Martin Luther and relates to the Arts).
The Precincts of the prestigious Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) – the repurposed lunatic asylum, is infused with dark karma – one can hear the faint echo of the cries of a century of previous inmates – deemed insane. The dungeon cells had iron frame beds with restraining shackles. And all of the upper art studios had bars on their fenestration.
Light was inadvertently filtered onto art student’s creative endeavors through a somewhat appropriate shadowed modernist grid. This odd juxtapositioning may well have amused the then Postmodern teaching fraternity.
The use of a Makonde Mapiko full head mask placed on a dressmaker’s dummy together with a heavy overcoat with Blue buttons and crossed rifle bandoliers creates a scarecrow-like figure. This awesome (over large) head and figure is every white racist’s nightmare, more especially bearing ammunition belts. These belts are both from the Boer War -1899-1902. The one holds 9mm Boer Mauser bullets and the other, English Enfield .303).
To the rear of the forbidding Victorian classical revival walled structure, a phallocratic Campanile reaches skywards – a symbol of surveillance. The sky has an otherworldly pink quality.
The title is derived from a line in the poem Evening Twilight by Charles Baudelaire in his Fleur de Mal. The dark stars of the Southern Cross in the pink sky are a repeat trope from an earlier work by the artist – Melanomia (2023). The Southern Cross stars have become washed-out tumours, an implied aesthetic toxicity.
ps. The mask traditionally served to ritualistically express the Makonde moral code. (the Makonde are a major Mozambican tribal group well-known for their prowess as wood carvers) .
