One Foot in the Arsegravy: A bunch of recent works.. and some explaining.

Thought I should put up clearer pics of some of the pieces from the exhibition - and probably explain some stuff. It didn't occur to me when I booked it, but the exhibition I had in May was actually my first ever show. Over the years I'd done commercial work & included art in group projects, but never put up a collection all my own. Maybe that comes from the Illustrator background - usually you produce work specifically to serve a narrative, often provided by someone else, and normally that's the person who pays you. The work is seen by others when it gets used for the author or publishers purpose & you move on. From an Illustrators point of view exhibitions can seem like the preserve of the Fine Artist. Or maybe that was just from THIS Illustrators pov & I just never compared notes enough to notice it was bollocks. And then in the last ten years I slowed the making-pics right down & didn't think about it much.. Given all that, I'm really happy it didn't crash n burn horribly.

The work in the show came partly from years of enjoying political cartoons - from Larry Pickering's endless knob gags of the 70's & 80's (although probably not his bonkers right-wing misogyny) through Geoff Pryor's beautiful draughtsmanship & general smarts in the Canberra Times, I've always admired these guys. Ron Tandberg, Bill Leak, Peter Nicholson (the brilliant Rubbery Figures man, for us fossils who remember it..), Michael Leunig, Cathy Wilcox, Mark Knight.. what a spectacular bunch. And that's just in this country. Anybody who's missed out on em should really go & have a look - they're worth it. And at a time of exclusive concentration by the media/public feedback loop on the sizzle rather than the steak, there don't seem to be many others apart from this lot quite as genuine or dogged in attempting to nail the PR stooges & wind-up toys that run everything now. Love em.

Another thing that had been on my mind for a while was stenciling - my favourites were always the ones that served the same purpose as political cartoons. I could go into detail, but you know how slow I write. Its late. Gotta keep it short! Oh, by the way, hope it doesn't sound like I'm saying my stuff is just like the guys above. I only mentioned all of that in an attempt to explain that their work inspires me - & that I really enjoy art with some reasonably well-formed idea behind it. Having said that, you can now scoff openly at how poorly my own pictures line up with that concept.