Rage and Intimacy

These works are some of those shown at the Nishi Gallery at New Acton in early 2020 as part of the Canberra multimedia art festival, Art, Not Apart.

My interest here is not just in a surge in activism and protests in cities around the world, made easier to organise by new media platforms, but in protests as emotional events of performative resistance. They are contests of ideas and battles over actual space. Two-dimensional objects - signs, banners and placards - are held like shields in defence of competing values. Emotions can get away and lead to contradictory acts of spontaneous violence, even when the protesters claim they are against violence.

This series, drawing from the same still image, using different paint mediums, sees so-called progressive forces clash with a central character who identifies with a neo-Nazi movement.