"Fair Dinkum Mural" Fine Art Print

“FAIR DINKUM” ARTISTS STATEMENT.

This artwork began with a discarded piece of trash that I found on the side of the road. I often wonder who’s responsible for discarded rubbish. I go for long walks near my house through farmlands and native bush blocks, picking rubbish up as I go. Does the responsibility lie with the person who’s spent 5 minutes drinking out of this can, or with the brand or manufacturers who created the product? When does a product stop being valuable? And why don’t brands like VB write characters into their advertising campaigns who recycle?

When the majority of rubbish that I find on the side of the road is either junk food, alcohol or cigarette packets, I use those advertising campaigns to formulate an image in my mind of the person who’s tossed it, and I wonder about the metaphors between how they treat their body and how they treat our environment.

The Aussie Bloke.. A Hard Earned Thirst.. Countless memories float through my mind; being sexually harassed by a drunk man while projecting my murals after dark, Grace Tame on the telly with empowering speeches about not being silenced anymore, a drunk man whipping his dick out and pissing on the glass window that I sit behind while eating my restaurant meal, looking me straight in the eye, smiling. I also reflect on the long fireside conversation I recently had with a male psychologist who specializes in treating men across 6 different Canberra based clinics, describing to me the depression and social isolation that his patients are experiencing as they try to grapple with archaic representations of Masculinity handed down to them by their fathers and grandfathers - emotionally absent, hard working men.

This artwork is a prayer, a well-wish, and a burial. If the VB can is tossed out the window and ran over, discarded and fossilized into our shared Country, can these unhealthy cultural norms die with it? Can we let go of archaic “Aussie Bloke” behaviors that continue to be perpetuated by advertising for iconic Australian brands just like VB, and rewrite what it means to look, sound, and lead like an Australian male?

// Digital photographic print on Epsom archival paper, printed locally at Macquarie Editions Fine Art Printers.