Our Australian experience is built on stories of cultural dislocation . I am looking to unpack not knowing where one stands... ‘I am here (Australia) ... Am there (Italia)’ or anywhere else globally; exploring the individually and collectively felt displacement as a way of sharing experience and bringing together through conversation.
Youtube digging is a key part of my research remind me of a time were the video rental Suzuki mini van would come to our house or going into a video rental joint looking for a specific title or finding a tittle buy chance. The importance of a direction connection to the subjects that I am dealing with expressed through the the ethos of my mother but being reminded by Stefan Sagmeister not to get carried away with being a “ story teller “ I am a first and foremost a Artist a Painter and with this comes success and failure. The lower you going to fall the higher your going to fly as Describe by Eugene Hutz reciting a passage from Friedrich Nietzsche. With all this naturally for me at least comes waiting and patience lessons leaned from Francesco Clemente. My works use raw and base materials, blunt and oozing to render a deceptively naive but sincere instinctive expression. I work with graphite, chinagraph, charcoal, crayons, acrylics and aerosols – the bread and butter of materials on paper, canvas and board to depict images of human virility and bravado and a scrawl of unedited but concise thought in text. Drawing inspiration from artist like our Australian heavy hitter Sidney Nolan. , oranges and grapes disclose both a lusty Mediterranean respect for food and sex, as well as revealing the importance of strength cultivated from childhood growing up on a vineyard in Mildura.
My current works Landrover's the fish that I have never caught and the faceless pulled apart Pinocchio waiting to be connected are powerfully expressed suggesting the importance of essence rather than specificity. Compositions often revolve around symbolism or Icons revolved around An assault of bold colours on black, or etched with sgraffito and monotone render unabashed Italo-Aussie pop imagery laden with mischievous fun and gusto while being firmly planted in the tradition of picture making.
