Atom Smasher, 2013

An unedited mapping of inane daily thoughts… Sometimes they are plans for paintings not good enough to resolve, sometimes a simple colour combination or test composition… sometimes a bit clever, mostly not… In fact cleverness is at the butt of this joke. The giant size exaggerates macho, museum-scale proportions… the imagery, while disparate, all asks the same thing: “will this do? How about this?”. In its own incredibly dumb way this thing asks an existential question: what will I do today? I don’t know, but I must do something.

Artists sit around all the time wondering about what art is – we’re used to that kind of thing – but must it always be done in a high minded and rarified way? What if it smells funny? What if it’s oily like a teenager? Visually, there is a lot going on, and there are things to be found. But it’s not a rebus where you’re going to find some symbolic structure. Good paintings tend to invite numerous readings, and can withstand them. 

"...faced with the depressing conviction that human purposiveness results in absurdity rather than meaningfulness, Camus advocates an ‘as if’ attitude to living… from the impermanence of life in Australia, from the intractable environment, weather and seasons, the migratory conditions of work, the feeling of isolation from the European mainstream, the Australian has developed a worldview that correlates with Camus’ ideas."

-Max Harris