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MAY 2011 - THE GOLDEN AGE Exhibition
On the 20th May 2011, The Golden Age, a new exhibition will open at the Hawkesbury Regional Gallery in Windsor NSW. It is curated by me and I am one of six Artists who will be exhibiting their own particular version of what might constitute a personal Golden Age.

The other Artists are; Dallas Bray, Allan Chawner, Jo Ernsten, Di Holdsworth and John Turrier.

 Artists, Poets and storytellers have written recorded ideas about a Golden Age in the West since the very early days of Ancient Greece. There are other myths outlining similar ideas in Hindu and Norse Mythology.
My own version of a Golden Age for this exhibition is based on a short story by Sydney Writer Peter Doyle called Hot Dogs- Cold War.
It’s the story of a young Bodgie called Billy Glasheen who, along with a collection of Musicians and Exotic Dancers, decides to take a trip down to Melbourne during the 1956 Olympic Games in a stolen car to make a quick buck selling dodgy Hot Dogs.
They soon become embroiled in selling amphetamine to Athletes, Trying to avoid other petty criminals with scores to settle and erupting Cold War politics.

We are currently beginning to organise a picture book with story and images called Hot Dogs- Cold War to coincide with the exhibition.
 The Golden Age runs from 20th May to 3rd July 2011

JULY 2010
It’s been a while since I’ve updated this site because I’ve put all my efforts into painting my next exhibition. It called “Myth and Memory” and, as the title suggests, it reflects on myth and memories that are both personal and cultural.

The paintings show things that actually happened but are represented in an altered sense, through the language of painting and my understanding of Art History. It also represents things that probably never happened but get filed away and altered over the years as memory. Some of these subjects may be things that I heard as a child by my parents in their own unreliable and sometimes romanticised accounts.

I read somewhere that when we remember something we are more likely to remember our last remembrance of that event or thing rather that the thing itself. It these formative, often fictionalised accounts of things that give us a sense of who we are and where we belong.

I guess I’m at a reflective stage in my life where I want to finally put some of these things down in paint. The images are not just about my own life, many are about cultural and historical events that have helped shape the Australian character, especially of my city, Sydney. Just about all of these images deal with the first half of the 20th Century which is roughly the time immediately before my birth when events can have a strong impact on the unborn as well as those who experienced them directly. Some are also from my childhood but would probably be unrecognisable to someone who was there with me.

I almost called the show “Myth, Memory and Miscreants” because there is a section which is devoted to portraits of people who were held overnight and photographed in Sydney’s Police holding cells for various crimes and misdemeanours. The photographs came to me via two excellent publications called “City of Shadows” and “Crooks like Us” which were both authored by Peter Doyle. I saw the great humanity of the trapped and distressed in some of those photographs as well as the chilling indifferent gaze of the odd psychopath. Painting them was a genuine pleasure.

Other images refer to the fictions of other artists such as the poetry of Kenneth Slessor and the novels of George Johnston whose writing has struck a chord with me over the years. There are also a few very unreliable accounts of how some American cultural exports have arrived in Sydney and what the locals may have made of it. Many of these events have had a great impact on my life and my generation. I’m hoping they will be read as an affectionate and sometimes humorous tribute to those artists.   

The show runs from 13th July to the 24th July at the Depot Gallery at 2 Danks Street Waterloo in Sydney’s southern inner suburbs.