This drawing is a requiem. Goodbye oil.

SF

Finalist in both the Adelaide Perry Prize and The Jacaranda Prize for Drawing in 2016

“Attack” collides the Japanese ink drawing technique with a contradictory subject. Converging a 1950’s Sci-Fi B-grade narrative with my abhorrence of antiquated oil technologies, the aggressive attack of my mark-making upon paper reflects the violent colonisation of the oil industry upon Earth.

My image making has been consistently influenced by boyhood fantasies informed by pop culture revelling in images of a high-tech future: we were promised a very different world to the one we have inherited. At the centre of this glittering utopia was the car. The Sci-Fi theme is a meme from my childhood returning to vanquish Earth: outer-space squid attack an oil guzzling car in an empty landscape punctuated by electric power pole “trees”. 

With the introduction of ‘Tesla’ battery technology, global cooperation on climate change and the Rockefeller family divesting 50 billion dollars from their oil businesses, it seems that we may be emerging from this old polluting dystopia.

This drawing is a requiem. Goodbye oil.