Not Candy – Just Dandy : provocation by Dr Jan Hogan, Coordinator of Printmaking & Drawing Studios, School of Creative Arts, University of Tasmania
In reply to the famed British ‘bad boy’ of contemporary Art Damien Hirst’s recent attempt at dot painting, Art Mob is exhibiting works by Central Desert artists to show how dot painting should really be done.
Since the 1970’s Aboriginal artists took up the tools of Modernist Art and transformed them into pulsating fields revealing the Central Australian Desert to be simmering with life. The resulting works transformed how the Australian Desert was imagined.
Damien Hirst has previously exhibited sliced sharks in formaldehyde and over 1,300 formulaic grids of (quite pretty) dot paintings done by his assistants that were labelled by an art critic as ‘just visual candy’. This year Hirst has attempted to paint the works himself saying he was inspired by French Post-Impressionists Georges Seurat and Pierre Bonnard. Aboriginal artists from the Central Desert believe that the influence is actually from their unique interpretations of the spiritual essence of their country. Art Mob invites you to judge the works for yourself and to reflect on Damien Hirst’s attempts in his recent ‘Veil paintings’.
