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Recent Works: Catalogue Notes

Ian Russell, Recent Works, Catalogue cover, 1990. Courtesy and Copyright Gertrude Contemporary Archive

Contemporary art has substituted spray-on deodorant for the perfume. It has denied the need for transcendaence. Blidn to this, art has been absorbed by a materialistic, two-dimensional world and has sawned thin works sustained only by theory ina deserty where nothing of substance can take root. 

By Ian Russell

In heaven they drink from gold cups and the number plates proclaim "State of Ecstasy". Here on Earth, such states are becoming increasingly rare as things in our world are democratically pre-packaged and sanitized so that what was once an organic mulch of lige, blood and Gods is now reduced to the geometric simplicity of a diet cracker. REV milk, Ken Done and geriatric FM rock stations bear witness to the barren anaemia that passes for our modern culture. And of course, God is dead.

Man has always had need of more than his lot. He has probed the unknown with his imagination and created all manner of mythical fantasies - alternative realities. That is why the church was such a great success. The naked, humbled mind, the position of religious adoration, supplication before the unknown - this bypassing of mundane and progane consciousness is often the only escape from reality, the only pathway to ecstasy. These states offer transcendence - a perfume to help make the white porcelain of modern life easier to swallow. But...

Contemporary art has substituted spray-on deodorant for the perfume. It has denied the need for transcendaence. Blidn to this, art has been absorbed by a materialistic, two-dimensional world and has sawned thin works sustained only by theory ina deserty where nothing of substance can take root. 

Behold! These paintings are an oasis, a cool hole in that flat light. The glint of pretty things. Morsels of nothingness. Homages to the unknown.

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